Lulu Mhlana
Biography
South African-born visual artist, activist and photographer Lulu Mhlana (Nolubabalo) (b.1993) is from the Eastern Cape and currently works and lives in Cape Town.
Mhlana is one of the country's foremost young photographers exploring representations of gender identity and non-binary bodies. They became as a self-trained lens-based artist after her Diploma in Business Communications from the Tshwane University of Technology (2014). She was awarded the Zanele Muholi Scholarship in Technical Photography at Cape Town School of Photography (2018).
Mhlana centres her practice around the intimacy of black bodies and black existence in rewriting the current and historical narratives of blackness. The folds of memory in the quiet moments of skin and culture layers the sensitivity and poise in her work.
Through Documentary Photography Mhlana forged a unique position as woman in documenting the intricate and sacred custom of male initiation through the partnership and guidance of her mother’s organisation Ubuntu Care and Development that prepares young men with skillsets into adulthood ahead of their initiation, amongst other social issues. In this regard the body in relation to cultural identity as a subject through sacredness is introduced in her work.
Switching in between the mediums of Documentary Photography and Self-Portraiture, under the tutelage of Lindeka Qampi and Zanele Muholi, her flagship project, Ubumnyama Bam was realised in 2019.
Her work is a personal and shared archive of blackness, and continues to contribute to the lack of representation of the black body in mainstream media.
Read More
