Zanele Muholi South Africa, b. 1972

“Bona” is a word from isiZulu; the Bantu language of the Zulus and one of the official languages of South Africa; and means “see” or “look.” In this self-portrait by the artist, Muholi seeks to challenge the traditional representation of Black women and queer people through the casting of their own reflection.

This particular work should be seen in the context of Muholi’s ongoing critically acclaimed series Somnyama Ngonyama – translated as ‘Hail the Dark Lioness.’ In this series Muholi turns the camera on themselves, aiming to capture an intimacy and reflect the beauty of the Black LGBTQIA+ community which Muholi continues to celebrate throughout their work. To rebel against Eurocentric beauty fixations, Muholi purposefully increases the contrast of their complexion in post-production editing of the images.

Bona III, ISGM, Boston was recently used as the leading cover art and advertising image for Muholi’s recent, critically acclaimed retrospective, Being Muholi: Portraits as Resistance, at the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum in Boston (February – May 2022).

Born in Umlazi, Durban in 1972, Zanele Muholi studied Advanced Photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg, completing an MFA in Documentary Media at Ryerson University, Toronto. Since the early 2000s, they have documented the day-to-day lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people in the townships around South Africa. Muholi has proclaimed that their aim 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 SA and beyond."