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Overview
Zanele Muholi (Born 19 July 1972 in Umlazi, Durban) is a South African photographer and visual activist.

Early Life
Muholi was born to Ashwell Tanji Banda Muholi and Bester Muholi and she is the last of 5 children. She completed an Advanced Photography course at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg in 2003, and held her first solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004. In 2009 she was awarded her Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Media from Ryerson University in Toronto. Her thesis mapped the visual history of black lesbian identity and politics in post-Apartheid South Africa.

Career
Muholi was employed as a photographer and reporter for Behind the Mask, an online magazine on LGBTI issues in Africa. During her work there, Muholi who self identifies as a lesbian, bore witness to countless acts of violent hate crimes and In 2002, she co-founded the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organization dedicated to providing a safe space for women to meet and organize. She researched and documented the stories of hate crimes against the gay community in order to bring forth the realities of “curative rape”, assault, and HIV/AIDS, to public attention.

Muholi held her first solo exhibition entitled 'Visual Sexuality: Only Half the Picture', at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2004 where she launched her visual activism through her non conservative photography. Her work is about bringing visibility of the black queers. She has been criticized for working on the black community but she states that there is no cannon for black lesbians in South Africa and she wants to change that, although she may branch out later on. She has exhibited at the CCA Lagos in Nigeria, the Kunsthalle Wien Project Space in Vienna, Michael Stevenson  in Cape Town, Le Case d’Arte in Milan, Fred in London, and as part of the Afrovibes Festival in Amsterdam.

Her recent group exhibitions include:  ...for those who live in it: Pop Culture, Politics and Strong Voices at MU Eindhoven, The Netherlands (2010); Bamako in Toronto, Toronto (2010); Undercover: Performing and Transforming Black Female Identities at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, USA (2009); and Life Less Ordinary: Performance and Display in South African Art at Djanogly Gallery, Nottingham, UK (2009). She has been selected for the São Paulo Biennial in the fall of 2010.

Exhibitions
Muholi has participated in the following;

Awards
She received the 2005 Tollman Award for the Visual Arts, the BHP Billiton/Wits University Visual Arts Fellowship in 2006, a 2009 Thami Mnyele Residency in Amsterdam, and was the 2009 Ida Ely Rubin Artist-in-Residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. She won the Casa Africa award for best female photographer and a Fondation Blachère award at the Rencontres de Bamako biennial of African photography in 2009, and received a Fanny Ann Eddy accolade from IRN-Africa for her outstanding contributions to the study of sexuality in Africa.

Books

 * Zanele Muholi: Only Half The Picture
 * Faces and Phases

Controversy
In March 2010, Minister of Arts and Culture, Lulu Xingwana walked out off an exhibition that featured Muholi’s photography, calling it immoral, offensive and going against nation-building. The Minister was criticised for violating section 16 (1) of the South African Constitution which states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, which includes freedom of the press and other media; freedom to receive and impart information or ideas; freedom of artistic creativity; academic freedom and freedom of scientific research.”. In her response Muholi expressed her sentiments by saying; "It's paralysing. I expected people to think before they act, and to ask questions. I wanted to create dialogue"