Phumzile Khanyile

Phumzile Khanyile (born 1991) is a South African photographer, living in Johannesburg. Her series "Plastic Crowns" is about women's lives and sexual politics. The series has been shown in group exhibitions at the Palace of the Dukes of Cadaval in Evora, Portugal; Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town; and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia; and was a winner of the CAP Prize for Contemporary African Photography,
Early life and education.
Khanyile was born in Tladi, Soweto, South Africa. She studied photography at the Market Photo Workshop from 2013.
Life and work.
"Plastic Crowns" is a series of self-portraits while dressed in her grandmother's clothes, with whom she lives. The series is concerned with the female experience of relations between the sexes, in terms of power. It is "an exploration of shame, and an unpacking of the expectations Khanyile inherited from her grandmother about what it means to be a woman"—"stereotypical ideas of gender, sexual preference and related stigmas and their relevance in contemporary society". It employs a snapshot aesthetic, "as if they're from a private journal", "raw and out-of-focus [. . . ] as much from the family album snapshot as the rough urban glamour of postwar Japanese photography". "Plastic Crowns" came about through Khanyile spending a lot of time indoors, having been too "scared to leave her house since she was attacked on the streets."
Khanyile and Nkosinathi Khumalo direct the Johannesburg project space Zulu Republik.