Photo of Zanele Muholi inside Georges Rousse's Installation at Durham Fruit by Diane Davis
Wow it has been 7 months since I last posted at the end of my sabbatical trip and a year since I did my last regular entry about goings on at Cassilhaus. I guess I just need to get back on the horse. All of our exhibitions and visiting artists are documented via this blog so its time to get caught up! This post takes us back to October of 2016 to the spectacular residency of South African artist and LGBTQI activist Zanele Muholi and her collaborators Lerato Dumse, Lindeka Qampi, and Thembela Dick.
I first learned of Zanele's work from a donation of one of her photos to the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University collection:
Katlego Mashiloane and Nosipho Lavuta, Ext. 2, Lakeside, Johannesburg Lambda Print Courtesy of Nasher Museum
Then I heard her speak at the Look3 Festival in Charlottesville, VA in 2015 and I was blown away. I invited her to the residency on the spot. I spoke to a few other residency programs who had hosted her and I was advised to be ready for ANYTHING. She did not disappoint! The first surprise of many wonderful surprises was that she arrived at RDU with 3 and not 1 collaborator as expected and they were all coming to Cassilhaus!
Thembela, Lindeka, Zanele, Lerato and Moi
Within hours of arrival we were exploring the most important cultural sites of Durham-the Scrap Exchange and the Parlour. They had never seen anything like the Scrap and they went crazy filling up two whole shopping carts with materials for Zanele's self portrait series Somnyama Ngonyama. This exuberance was all the more amazing given that in the previous 100 hours they had flown to North Carolina from South Africa via Paris (to accept an award), Amsterdam (to open an exhibition), and New York (meetings for upcoming events).
Their energy was both inspiring and daunting. Even during their "retreat" at Cassilhaus they flew to Cincinnati, Boston, and New York for various events and were constantly making work here. Zanele and team were in great demand in the community. We try to protect our visiting artists from too many requests for their time so they can have a productive and private residency but Zanele was incredibly generous with her time and worked with so many students at local schools and universities, gave a keynote address at the Click! Photography Festival, and met with several LGBTQI organizations in the Triangle.
They also did an interview on The State of Things with Frank Stasio
Despite the incredibly heavy and emotionally charged work that she does, Zanele brought so much joy everywhere she went.
She produced amazing work while she was here-much of it at the house. There has been extensive press on this work including in the New Yorker, Vogue, and The Village Voice. The work was even on a giant display in Times Square during her appearance at Performa 17.
We are honored to have added the piece above, Basizeni XI, Cassilhaus, North Carolina, 2016, to our collection. Zanele made the piece in our front yard from tire inner-tubes from the Scrap Exchange. While stunningly beautiful, it references the horrific hate crime of necklacing in her home country.
Phaphama at Cassilhaus, North Carolina, 2016.
Xiniwe at Cassilhaus, North Carolina, 2016.
Hlonipha at Cassilhaus, North Carolina, 2016.
Gcina I, Cassilhaus, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2016
Namhla I, Cassilhaus, North Carolina, 2016
Zanele and her team were so charged by the work that they had done in North Carolina that they decided to mount a major pop-up exhibition of all of their work just 5 days before their departure! Thanks to the incredible generosity of Tim Walter at The Fruit and a SWAT team of volunteers we pulled it off and it was a smash!
The power of this work and these artist/activists continues to ripple through our lives. Barely a day goes by that we don't hear something about Zanele's work from some corner of the world. She was recently Knighted by the French Government for her pioneering civil rights work. Just this morning I learned of her incredible upcoming partnership with the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center. She has dedicated her life to improving the lives and protection of LGBTQI people everywhere and it was one of the great honors of our lives to host her, Lerato, Lindeke, and Thembela at Cassilhaus.