Massa and Minah VI, Brazil, from the series Massa and Minnah,

2010

<p> Sir Zanele Muholi’s <em>Massa and Minnah </em>draws on the artist’s family history. Their mother, Bester Ziqubu Muholi, was employed for forty-two years as a domestic worker in the household of the same family. To create the series, Muholi performed a similar role to their mother’s in staged domestic scenes that they commissioned other photographers to document. The compositions explore the racial and power dynamics during the Apartheid regime in South Africa between the Black women, who often occupied service jobs, and their white employers. Muholi imbues the intimate knowledge between employer and employed with an erotic charge. One composition features the artist distracted from their backbreaking labor by their employer’s turn of a corner, her flowing dress, bare legs, and heeled sandals framing the artist’s upturned gaze. Another finds Muholi in a rare moment of rest. </p>