Ethnic Beauty of the Week - Thatha Tshisa Thursday

Today we will look at photographer extraordinaire Zanele Muholi. Where did I come across this gem of a photographer? UPeople ofcourse. Watch the episode below.

Her photographs depicting queer African women are astounding. They are beautiful and offer sensuality that is classy and homey. Okay so I'm doing some literal translating in trying to express myself. All I've really got to say is checkout her work yourself.

Zanele's bio is further along in this post. Support African artists, if you can afford it, buy some original artwork! If not, start saving!

Zanele Muholi was born in Umlazi, Durban, in 1972. She completed an Advanced Photography course at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown and held her first solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004. She has worked as a community relations officer for the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organisation based in Gauteng, and has as a photographer and reporter for Behind the Mask, an online magazine on lesbian and gay issues in Africa. Her work represents the black female body in a frank yet intimate way that challenges the history of the portrayal of black women’s bodies in documentary photography. Her solo exhibition Only half the picture, which showed at Michael Stevenson in March 2006, has travelled to the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg and the Afrovibes Festival in Amsterdam. She was the recipient of the 2005 Tollman Award for the Visual Arts, and the first BHP Billiton/Wits University Visual Arts Fellowship in 2006. Recent group exhibitions include Heterotopias: the first Thessaloniki Biennale (2007); Olvida Quien Soy - Erase me from who I am at the Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (2006); Second to None at the South African National Gallery (2006) and Subject to Change at the SANG (2005).
Extracted from http://www.michaelstevenson.com/contemporary/artists/muholi.htm