Courage + Creativity Award

Lyle Ashton Harris, 2018 Courage + Creativity Award Recipient

On 1 June 2018 AFRICA'SOUT! will present the annual Courage + Creativity Award to Lyle Ashton Harris for his continued dedication to exploring issues of identity, community and cultural histories. For more than two decades Harris has cultivated a diverse artistic practice ranging from photographic media, collage, installation and performance. His work explores intersections between the personal and the political, examining the impact of ethnicity, gender and desire on the contemporary social and cultural dynamic. Known for his self-portraits and use of pop culture icons (such as Billie Holiday and Michael Jackson), Harris teases the viewers’ perceptions and expectations, resignifying cultural cursors and recalibrating the familiar with the extraordinary.

Harris has exhibited work widely, including at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York) and The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) among many others, as well as at international biennials (São Paulo, 2016; Busan, 2008; Venice, 2007; Seville, 2006; Gwangju, 2000).

> For examples of Lyle's work visit HERE

Zanele Muholi, 2016 Courage + Creativity Award Recipient, South Africa

On 3 June 2016 AFRICA’SOUT! presented the annual award to Muholi for her active approach to address issues of human rights at the core of her artwork. Specifically for her work that explores black lesbian and gay identities and politics in contemporary South Africa. For more than a decade Muholi has created a visual record of the LGBT community in her home country. In 2006, Muholi began her Faces and Phases project, an ambitious series of portraits of lesbians, now numbering in the hundreds. Faces and Phases is the subject of an extensive book, published by Steidl, which forms a monumental chapter in Muholi’s work, which has been exhibited globally.

Among Muholi’s many international honors, the Brooklyn Museum mounted a major exhibition of large- scale photographs titled Isibonelo/Evidence. Carnegie International awarded her theFine Prize for emerging artists in 2013, and her work was presented at the Carnegie Museum ofArt. Her work is represented in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Tate Modern, London; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others. Muholi participated in the 55th Venice Biennial in 2013.

> For examples of Zanele's work visit HERE

Binyavanga Wainaina, 2015 Courage + Creativity Award recipient, Kenya

Binyavanga Wainaina is a Kenyan author, publisher and cultural worker. He is the founding editor of one of Africa’s leading literary institutions, Kwani?. His “How to Write About Africa” attracted wide attention globally and his memoir, "One Day I Will Write About This Place", has been translated into several languages. In 2007, he was nominated by the World Economic Forum as a "Young Global Leader". He declined the award.

Binyavanga has been a Sterling Brown Fellow at Williams College, Massachusetts, a Lannan Fellow and a Visiting Writer at Union College, New York. Until 2012 he was the Director of the Chinua Achebe Center for African Writers and Artists at Bard College.

For over eleven years Binyavanga has sought, worked with, published, mentored and promoted some of Africa’s most exciting new literary talent. In 2014 he came out publicly as gay and was named by Time magazine as one of 100 most influential people in the world in the same year.