Sunday Francis Mdlankomo, Vosloorus, Johannesburg
Brooklyn Museum photograph
Object Label
Zanele Muholi’s Faces and Phases series creates a visual repository of Black lesbian, transgender, and queer sitters in South Africa and its diaspora—one whose prior absence the artist linked to a history of invisibility, violence, and discrimination in the country. While legal rights for LGBTQ+ citizens in South Africa are among the most progressive in the world, these photographs respond to the discrepancies that exist between constitutional protections and lived experiences of gender and sexual violence. Muholi’s portraits emphasize a direct, frontal gaze and sense of self-assertion, interrupting a viewing of the subjects and their diverse identities as marginal.
Caption
Zanele Muholi South African, born 1972. Sunday Francis Mdlankomo, Vosloorus, Johannesburg, 2011. Gelatin silver print, sheet: 33 7/8 × 23 7/8 in. (86 × 60.6 cm) image: 29 15/16 × 19 15/16 in. (76 × 50.6 cm) frame: 34 1/8 × 24 1/8 in. (86.7 × 61.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Robert A. Levinson Fund, 2012.72.1. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 2012.72.1_PS20.jpg)
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Gallery
Not on view
Collection
Artist
Title
Sunday Francis Mdlankomo, Vosloorus, Johannesburg
Portfolio
Date
2011
Medium
Gelatin silver print
Classification
Dimensions
sheet: 33 7/8 × 23 7/8 in. (86 × 60.6 cm) image: 29 15/16 × 19 15/16 in. (76 × 50.6 cm) frame: 34 1/8 × 24 1/8 in. (86.7 × 61.3 cm)
Credit Line
Robert A. Levinson Fund
Accession Number
2012.72.1
Rights
© artist or artist's estate
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Frequent Art Questions
Tell me more.
I love Zanele Muholi. Her work is so political. She considers herself a visual activist who has dedicated her career to promoting awareness of her native South Africa’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex communities.These two photographs are from her ongoing portrait series Faces and Phases that she began in 2006.She focuses on the region’s black lesbian community, presenting her subjects frontally, their penetrating gazes stoic yet vulnerable.Wow she must have faced a lot of backlash.
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