Latest / Stuff Mom Never Told You / Feminists Around the World: Zanele Muholi

Transcript

Feminists Around the World: Zanele Muholi · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Anny and Samantha and welcome to.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Stuff Wh've never told you, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: And today for activists around the world, we are featuring
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the works and afficacy of South African artists Zanelli Moholy.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: They go by bathim and describes themselves as a visual
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: activist who uses their works as way to advocate for
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the rights and protection of the South African queer community,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: specifically the lesbian and non binary and trans community. They
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: do a lot of work in that field in specific areas. First,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: if you haven't go and followed their works on social media,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: they have updated and shown new shows that they're happening
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: on their site and is under their name and I
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: will spell it correctly this time A N E L
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: E M the UHO l I. So you should go
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: and follow their works. They have some great content on there.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: They have some good like meditation stuff, vibration stuff. You know,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: we love that over here. So if you need that
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: in your feed go follow them first and foremost. So
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: here's a bit about them from the Britannica dot com
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: Because yes they are pretty big, but I mean for
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: those who are not in the art world at the
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: we need to feature them obviously, so Zanelli Maholy born
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: July nineteen, nineteen seventy two. They identify as visual artists
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: rather than an artist, and is non binary using vadim pronouns.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: Their work, primarily photography, seeks to make more visible the
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: black l gpt quia plus community in South Africa, where
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: discrimination has often repressed queer and trans stories. Mohoy says
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: of their work that my mission to rewrite a Black,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: queer and trans visual history of South Africa for the
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: world to know of our resistance and existence at the
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: height of hate crimes in South Africa and beyond. They
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: are the youngest of eight children from the town of Umlazi.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Growing up during the time of apartheid in their country,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: Mohoy worked to fight against the violence and belittling rhetoric
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: that was prevalent and kind of still is against the
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: lgbtqia plus community. As they advanced their career and passion,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: their work was used as their own activism around the world.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Working with publications like Behind the Mask, they made sure
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: to show the struggles women, especially queer women, experience in
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: a country that tried to silence them and that tries
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: to silence them. Yeah. Work like this led them into
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: co founding organizations like Forum for the Empowerment of Women
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: or a Few, which worked to advocate and provide safety
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: for women in the community. At the same time, Moholy
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: continued in getting their education and advanced in their arts.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: After getting their MFA at Ryerson University in Toronto, they
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: founded another nonprofit in Concio, which specifically worked on queer
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: media advocacy and activism. So they're already doing a lot.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Going by the term visual activists. Maholly has talked about
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: using their art as tool to bring change. Here's a
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: bit from sfmoma dot org. What does it mean to
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: be a visual activist? For South African artists? Zanelli Mahoy,
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: art is a tool of for social change. My practice
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: as a visual artist looks at black resistance existence as
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: well as insistence, Mahoy explained in an interview published by
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Autograph App. Most of the work I've done over the
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: years focuses exclusively on black LGBTQIA and gender nonconforming individuals,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: making sure we exist in the visual archive. So they
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: have done a lot of interviews. They did a great
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: YouTube series about their exhibits and talking about how their
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: work is political is political because they are talking about
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: resistance and it will never not be which I think
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: is something important that we have to talk about because
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: in this day and the age of people being like,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: why does it all have to be political? Because if
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: we want to make change of resistance, it is political.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: And the article goes on to talk about their works
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: of saying a self described visual activist, Zanelli Moholy uses
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the camera to explore issues of gender, identity, representation, and race,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: often photographing their own body or members of their LGBTQ
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: plus community in South Africa. Moholy calls attention to the
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: trauma and violence enacted on queer people while celebrating their
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: beauty and resilience. Activism essential to Moholly's artistic practice, from
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: their early work contending with the dangers of being queer
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: in South Africa to their more recent work embracing their
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: own blackness and gender expression. So in two thousand and four,
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: they did their first solo show in Johannesburg featuring photos
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: from her series Only Half the Picture. So this is
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: kind of one of her earliest works. And a bit
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: more from the Britannica article shot in black and white,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: the works document members of the black LGBTQIA plus community
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: and intimate moments that defy taboos. Participants' faces are not shown,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: only isolated parts of the body, such as a hairy
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: chest and a lace spra or a thigh showing a long,
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: thick scar. The show was met with critical acclaim and
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Maholly was soon showing internationally, including in Vienna, Amsterdam, Milan
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: and Lagos and obviously more. And They emphasize the term
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: participants instead of subjects due to the fact that they
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: feel that the people involved are collaborators of activism and advocacy.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: They have talked about the importance of empowering their participants
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: and allowing them to have a say in the artwork,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: especially as they're being represented, and though their photography has
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: been their main focus around the world, they also love
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: other artistic expressions, such as painting and even directing. During
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the pandemic, they focused more on painting due to the
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: lack of opportunities of social events and gathering, so you know,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: you got to express yourself some way, even if it's
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: not with other people. And they've also directed several documentaries.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: In twenty ten, they did one title Difficult Love, which
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: gives a bit of insight into the lives of Moholly
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: and other black lesbians in South Africa. So they go
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: around telling those stories, which was actually broadcast around the world.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Then they did another one later titled We Live in Fear,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: which was released by the Human Rights Watch. So they've
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: done a lot of this type of work. I think
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: it's important to note, and they've still done a lot
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: of works since the pandemic twenty twenty and beyond, including
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: a show they did titled Sunyama in Yan Gamma, which
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: this is what the Britannica wrote about that their colorful
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: self portraits recall the compositions of Sanyama in ghan Yama
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: and continue Maholly's investigation of the black body, gender and representation.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: So that specific one was based on their own self portrait.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: They're taking like different types of pictures of them and
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: how they envisioned where they would be, what they would
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: look like during different timelines. So they talked about this
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: work specifically and like envisioning and fantasizing what it would
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: have been like had they been there during that time,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: or had had black bodies and black women been included
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: so beautiful work. I think one of the pictures were
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: actually shared or was actually on the cover of the
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: National Geographic, So you know, pretty big deal, pretty big deal.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: The article continues. That same year, a major survey of
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: their work was held at Tate Modern, London. Other exhibits
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: include Zanelli Moholy I Me, which was released in twenty
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: twenty four at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Being Moholy Portraits as Resistance at the Gardner Museum Boston,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: and Zanelli Moholly twenty twenty one in Berlin. Their photos
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: are in the collections of many world renowned institutions, including
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: Central Pompadou Paris, the Gougenheim Museum, New York, and the
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Zeit's Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town. So they've
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: got a lot of work going on, and in fact,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: according to their Instagram, they have an upcoming show in Miami, Florida. Interesting, right,
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: I'm telling you. They're all three local. They had a
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: show in Nola as well, New Orleans, so they are
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: about the world. So if you get an opportunity, it's
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: definitely something worth going to check out and seeing it
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: as beautiful works, and they have tons and tons and
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: tons of accolades, and we're just going to name a few,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: including the Federal Award in twenty thirteen, which was the
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: South Africa's LGBTI Awards. They won the twenty sixteen Outstanding
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: International Alumni Award from Ryerson University. They won the Honor
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Fellowship of the Royal Photographics Society in Bath, England in
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, the Lucy Humanitarian Award in twenty nineteen, and
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: I do believe her work has been featured and released
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: in award winning books as well. So if you want
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: to look for those out there in the world, you
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: should again go and check out their social media, their
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Instagram because they have a lot of work up and
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: I think it's amazing as they continue their work and
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: continue their artistry and celebrating their visual activism.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, go check all of that stuff out if
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: you have not already. Listeners and as always, if you
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: have any suggestions, let us know any resources, anything we
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: should check out. You can email us at Hello at
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: stuffannevertold you dot com. You can find us on blue
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: Sky app also podcast, or on Instagram and TikTok at
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: stuff one Never told you We're ls on YouTube. We
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: have some new merchandise at common Buro and we have
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: a book you can get wherever you get your books.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Thanks as always too our superprendews Christina, our secretive producer Maya,
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: and your contributor Joey. Thank you and thanks to you
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: for listening stuff Never told you. Dispection by Heart Radio.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: For more podcast from my heart Radio, you can check
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: out the heart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or you listen
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: to your favorite shows