Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Volume II - by Renée Mussai (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

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, Volume II, Zanele Muholi explores and expands upon notions of Blackness, and the myriad possibilities of the 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 different materials or found objects referencing their environment, a specific event or lived experience, 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."

Review Quotes

Zanele Muholi's portraits are images that change the temperature of a room. ... They inhabit tropes of classical beauty, futuristic foreboding, primeval fierceness, and indeterminately regal stature through cranial embllishments that magnify the figure centered in each image. It is a figure who morphs from persona to persona in each portrait, reconfiguring the aesthetic frame to recenter Blackness as a new standard of beauty. --Tina M. Campt--Tina M. Campt