Claude Cahun, (France, 1894-1954), Samuel Fosso (Nigeria, Cameroon, 1962) and Zanele Muholi (South Africa, 1972) are participating in an exhibition at FOMU, the photo-museum in Antwerp.
Claude, Samuel, Zanele. Three photographers who focus the lens on itself as a window on the world. They each address issues about politics, race, gender and identity in a personal way.
Throughout her life, Claude Cahun took photographs of herself that challenged preconceptions about gender and identity. Born Lucy Schwob into a Jewish family of publishers, she is known as a transgender avant-la-lettre, an outspoken opponent of Nazism and an active member of the surrealist art scene.
Samuel Fosso started his own photography studio at the age of thirteen. He used remnants of film rolls to take his first self-portraits. Fosso communicates a clear political message by continually adopting new identities. Through his work, postcolonial freedom fighters finally have a place in the museum.
For the series Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, visual activist Zanele Muholi uses their own body as a canvas to address personal and cultural politics of race. Each self-portrait, taken in (South) Africa, America, Europe and elsewhere, asks critical questions about social (in)justice, human rights, and contested representations of the Black body.
