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mfikrig_haunted by solitude final.pdf (702.62 KB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Haunted by Solitude: Isolation and Communal Representation in Zanele Muholi's Archive

Fikrig, Michelle Marie
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2116-8529
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1527685493796687

Abstract Details

2018, BA, Oberlin College, Art.
This paper focuses on contemporary South African photographer Zanele Muholi’s (b. 1972) extensive photographic archival project, Faces and Phases, which documents South Africa’s black queer community. The series exists not only as a book published in 2014, but as an exhibition that has been shown globally. In the introduction to their book of the Faces and Phases series Muholi states their goal as “[articulating] the collective pain [black lesbians] as a community experience” (emphasis mine). Yet the series, composed of over two hundred black and white portraits, is made up of photographs of individual black lesbians. This paper explores the central tension between the seclusion or isolation that is evident in the portraits of Faces and Phases and the objective of community representation that Muholi notes as their goal for the project. Both Faces and Phases's place within a legacy of colonial archival projects and the contemporary display practices associated with the project will be examined to understand the subversive qualities of the series as a postcolonial archive. Using queer theory, I will consider the display of Muholi’s archive as a queering of the colonial archival projects that have dominated South African visual history. Case study exhibitions from around the world of Muholi’s work will be compared to other artist reimaginings of the archive such as Santu Mofokeng’s The Black Photo Album / Look at Me 1890-1950, and examined individually in order to establish the affect of display on photographic archival projects.
Matthew F. Rarey (Advisor)
James Paul Hansen (Committee Member)
Meredith Gadsby (Committee Member)
79 p.
Art History
South Africa; photography; queer; portraiture; LGBTI; Zanele Muholi

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Fikrig, M. M. (2018). Haunted by Solitude: Isolation and Communal Representation in Zanele Muholi's Archive [Undergraduate thesis, Oberlin College]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1527685493796687

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Fikrig, Michelle. Haunted by Solitude: Isolation and Communal Representation in Zanele Muholi's Archive. 2018. Oberlin College, Undergraduate thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1527685493796687.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Fikrig, Michelle. "Haunted by Solitude: Isolation and Communal Representation in Zanele Muholi's Archive." Undergraduate thesis, Oberlin College, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=oberlin1527685493796687

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

oberlin1527685493796687
763
© 2018, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Oberlin College Honors Theses and OhioLINK.