South African queer visual activist Sir Zanele Muholi has been awarded the prestigious 2021 SPECTRUM- International Prize for Photography from Stiftung Niedersachsen. Throughout their career, Muholi has used their work to create awareness around LGBTIAQ+ rights and interrogate the violence often experienced by the queer community in South Africa.

“Muholi succeeds in pushing clichéd conceptions of the exotic to extremes by adopting unusual accessories and hairstyles and satirising stereotypes. Subtle humour and profound earnestness come together in the power of formal compositions. In this way, Muholi’s photographs lend foreign attributions and staged self-assertion a force and beauty rarely encountered in contemporary photography,” said a SPECTRUM jury member. 

The Durban-born artist has been creating work that documents the experiences of Black queer people in South Africa for over a decade.  One of their most well-known projects is the ongoing Somnyama Ngonyama (“Hail the Dark Lioness”) self-portrait series that raises “critical questions about social injustice, human rights, and contested representations of the black body”.

The world-renowned artist has received France’s Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, an honour that comes with the title “Sir”, and their work has been exhibited at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, and the Venice Biennale, to name a few.

The 2021 Spectrum Award comes with a €15 000 prize as well as the opportunity to exhibit work at the Sprengel Museum Hannover in March 2021.