“Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail the Dark Lioness,” an exhibition of photographs by Zanele Muholi at Harvard’s Ethelbert Cooper Gallery, is an art history textbook painted black.
Muholi uses these everyday objects and poses from famous paintings in the Western canon to expose centuries of violence, disenfranchisement and fetishizing of black cultures and people.
Muholi’s black body in this space is also pushing a question, what about the Afro-Japanese populations that are never represented in mainstream culture?
In portraits where Muholi wears an elaborate necklace of cowrie shells or a footstool as a crown, the artist references the exoticism placed on African cultures.
“With this work, people will see that it’s possible that the gallery is meant to be for everybody and not for a select few and also to engage in a mature and constructive way,” says Muholi.
