Zanele Muholi, ‘Bambatha I’, 2023

On view from 7 October

Zanele Muholi, Bambatha I, 2023

Bronze. Edition of 3, plus 2 AP. Presented by Southern Guild

About the Work

Zanele Muholi’s large-scale bronze sculpture, Bambatha I (2023), depicts a monstrous engulfment of the artist’s body, or rather their biologically determined ‘box’ – a term the artist uses to refer to the space encompassing their breasts and vagina. In this queer avatar, Muholi’s figure appears trapped by malignant tubing that forms a strange, amorphous mass around them – a reference both to the artist’s struggle with fibroids and gender dysphoria. The piece is a poignant reminder of the somatic unease, anxiety and depression which results from incongruence with one’s own body. 

In the past few years, Muholi’s focus has broadened to reclaim ownership of their story beyond their prize-winning photography. Their three-dimensional expansion into bronze honours this familial origin, along with commemorating Black women and LGBTQI+ individuals’ contributions to art, politics, medical sciences and culture. 

With self-portraiture as its predominant mode, their work presents a personal reckoning with themes including sexual pleasure and freedom, inherited taboos around female genitalia and biological processes, gender-based violence and the resultant trauma, pain and loss, sexual rights, and biomedical education. Bambatha I was made for Muholi’s eponymous solo exhibition at Southern Guild Cape Town in 2023, which called for new rites of self-expression, sexuality, mothering and healing that usher in kinder modes of survival in our contemporary world. The exhibition, which travelled to the gallery’s Los Angeles location in May 2024, was in part a response to South Africa’s ongoing femicide, the stigmatization of LGBTQI+ communities and the proliferation of gender-based violence, especially the ‘curative’ or ‘corrective’ rape of Black lesbians. Muholi’s own struggle with uterine fibroids and reckoning with their Catholic upbringing also deeply inform Bambatha I’s emotive symbology. 

About the Artist

Zanele Muhol (b. Durban; lives and works between Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa) is a visual activist, humanitarian and art practitioner who focuses on the documentation and celebration of the lives of their country’s Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex communities.  

Recent solo exhibitions of Muholi’s work include Tate Modern, London (2024 and 2020); SF Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco (2024); Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP), Paris (2023); Museo delle Culture (MUDEC) Photo, Milan (2023); National Gallery of Iceland (2022); Kunstforeningen Gl Strand, Denmark (2022); Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Spain (2022); Fotografihuset, Norway (2022); the Finnish Museum of Photography (2022); the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston (2022); Bildmuseet, Umeå (2021); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2021); Sprengel Museum, Hannover (2021); Cummer Museum, Florida (2021); Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2020); Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art at Harvard University (2020). 

Muholi has exhibited at the 58th Venice Biennale (2019), Performa 17, New York (2017) and featured in the inaugural exhibitions at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town; and at the 22nd Sydney Biennale (2020). Muholi’s ‘Faces and Phases’ series was shown at the South African Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); dOCUMENTA 13 (2012), and the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010). 

Recent awards and accolades include the Image Arts Wall of Fame at Toronto Metropolitan University (2022); International Center of Photography’s Spotlights (2022); Spectrum International Prize for Photography (2020); Lucie Award for Humanitarian Photography (2019); the Rees Visionary Award by Amref Health Africa (2019); a fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society, UK (2018); and France’s Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2017). 

Frieze Sculpture is in The Regent’s Park, 18 September – 27 October 2024. No booking required, it is free and accessible to all. 

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^{Main Image: Zanele Muholi, Bambatha I, 2023. Courtesy: Hayden Phipps/Southern Guild © Zanele Muholi. Image courtesy: Zanele Muholi and Southern Guild}