Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Volume II

Exhibition Schedule:

• MEP, Paris, February 1, 2023—May 21, 2023
• Mudec Museo delle Culture, Milan, March 30—July 30, 2023 
• Haus der Kunst, Munich, April 14—July 23, 2023
• Kunstmuseum Luzern, Lucerne, Switzerland, October 22, 2023—February 11, 2024
• SFMOMA, San Francisco, December 16, 2023—June 2, 2024
• Tate, London, Opens June 2024
• Victoria and Albert Museum, London, May 4, 2024—January 5, 2025

The highly anticipated second volume to the widely acclaimed and celebrated self-portrait series, Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness

In Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Vol. II, Zanele Muholi explores and expands upon new personas and poetic interpretations of personhood, queerness, Blackness, and the possibilities of self. Since the publication of the first volume in 2018, Muholi has continued to photograph themself in a range of new international locations. Drawing on material props found in each environment, Muholi boldly explores their own image and innate possibilities as a Black individual in today’s global society, and—most important—speaks emphatically in response to contemporary and historical racisms. Renée Mussai, curator and historian, brings together written contributions from more than ten curators, poets, and authors, building a poetic and experimental framework that extends the idea of speculative futures and the potentiality of multivalent selves. Powerfully arresting, this collection further amplifies Muholi’s expressive and radical manifesto. As they state in the first volume, “My practice as a visual activist looks at Black resistance—existence as well as insistence.”