Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Volume II

Photographs by Zanele Muholi. Edited by Renée Mussai. Text by Sophia Al-Maria, Natasha Becker, Phoebe Boswell, Tina M. Campt, Natasha Ginwala, Natasha Ginwala, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Aluta Humbane, Ntsiki Jacobs, Khanyisile Mbongwa, Porsha Olayiwola, Lola Olufemi, and Legacy Russell. Designed by Grégoire Pujade-Lauraine.

In Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Volume II, Zanele Muholi explores and expands upon new personas and poetic interpretations of personhood, queerness, Blackness, and the possibilities of 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 material props found in each environment, 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.”