The Vulnerability Paradox

 Zanele Muholi’s portraits arrive with the weight of activism, but in the gallery’s hush they sometimes stumble under their own gravity. The images, drenched in vulnerability, insist on being more than photographs, they want to be monuments. Yet in New York, where the art scene thrives on irony and layered nuance, the work can feel almost too earnest, too insistent. The flaw here isn’t technical, it’s tonal. By leaning so heavily into the politics of representation, Muholi risks flattening the complexity of their subjects into symbols, the portraits are powerful, yes, but they can read like slogans in grayscale. In a city that prizes ambiguity, the clarity of Muholi’s message feels almost heavy handed. Still, the paradox is undeniable, the very “flaw” of overstatement is what makes the work impossible to ignore. Muholi’s art dares the critic to call it excessive, and in doing so, it exposes the critic’s own discomfort with raw, unvarnished truth. That’s a New York move if ever there was one, turning vulnerability into confrontation

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