About the Event

In celebration of World Pride, join us as we welcome internationally acclaimed South African artist and visual activist Zanele Muholi (they/them) for an evening of conversation and reflection. This program will celebrate Somnyama Ngonyama: Vol II, the newest installment of Muholi’s powerful photographic series exploring identity, race, and resilience through self-portraiture. Muholi will be joined by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Ph.D., an award-winning writer, scholar, and professor of English at Georgetown University. The pair will discuss the intersection of their respective practices, foregrounding the history and visibility of Black lesbians and transgender people as well as the representation of the Black queer body in contemporary diasporic art and literature.

There will be a book signing following the discussion. Copies of both speakers’ books will be available for purchase.

Zanele Muholi is a South African visual activist and photographer. For over a decade they have documented Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people’s lives in various townships in South Africa. Responding to the continuing discrimination and violence faced by the LGBTQ+ community, in 2006 Muholi embarked on an ongoing project, Faces and Phases, in which they depict Black lesbian and transgender individuals. Muholi’s self-proclaimed mission is “to re-write a Black queer and trans visual history of South Africa for the world to know of our resistance and existence at the height of hate crimes in South Africa and beyond.” These arresting portraits are part of Muholi’s contribution towards a more democratic and representative South African queer history. Through this positive imagery, Muholi hopes to offset the stigma and negativity attached to queer identity in African society.

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Ph.D., is the author of three books: Big Girl (2022), a New York Times Editors’ Choice and winner of the Balcones Fiction Prize and the Next Generation Indie Book Award for First Novel; The Poetics of Difference: Queer Feminist Forms in the African Diaspora (2021), winner of the William Sanders Scarborough Prize from the Modern Language Association; and the short story collection, Blue Talk and Love (2015), winner of the Judith Markowitz Award from the Lambda Literary Foundation. She has earned honors from Bread Loaf, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, the Mellon Foundation, the Center for Fiction, the National Endowment for the Arts, and others. Originally from Harlem, NY, she is professor of English at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Presented in partnership with Tara Aura of Blind Seed LLC.