Zanele Muholi

(South Africa, 1972-)

Ntozakhe II, Parktown, 2016 (2016)

Born in 1972 in Umlazi, South Africa, Muholi has dedicated their career to documenting the lives of marginalised communities and celebrating their experiences through powerful portraits, films and installations that have transformed the landscape of contemporary African art and LGBTQIA+ representation. As a self-described visual activist, Muholi uses the camera to explore issues of gender identity, representation and race.

Beginning their formal training at Johannesburg’s Market Photo Workshop in 2002, Muholi co-founded the Forum for the Empowerment of Women that same year and went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Media from Ryerson University in 2009, with a thesis on the visual history of Black lesbian identity in post‑apartheid South Africa. Committed to community empowerment, they also co-founded Inkanyiso, a collective for queer visual media, in 2009 and, just four years later, became an Honorary Professor at the University of the Arts/Hochschule für Künste Bremen.

Muholi’s seminal portrait series Faces and Phases (2006–2011) revolutionised the representation of Black lesbian life with over 200 compelling black‑and‑white portraits that celebrate individuality, resilience and visibility to reclaim blackness and challenge colonial beauty standards.

Muholi’s impact extends far beyond the art world. Their work serves as both historical documentation and political activism, creating archives of joy, resilience, and identity within communities that have faced systematic oppression. Through exhibitions at major institutions worldwide, including recent retrospectives at prestigious museums, Muholi continues to champion visibility, dignity, and human rights through their transformative visual storytelling.

Since their first solo exhibition in 2004, Muholi’s work has been exhibited at prestigious international venues including dOCUMENTA in 2012, the Stedelijk Museum in 2017, Brooklyn Museum in 2018, Tate Modern in 2021 and 2024, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2022, and has entered the permanent collections of the Centre Pompidou, Tate, Guggenheim and Zeitz MOCAA, in addition to representing South Africa at the Venice Biennale in 2019.

Muholi remains based in Johannesburg, continuing to foreground Black queer and trans visibility through exhibitions, community engagement and new media sculptural portraits and large‑scale installations that challenge viewers to confront systemic exclusion and reimagine liberation.

Image: Zanele Muholi, Ntozakhe II, Parktown, 2016 (2016, printed 2022), (from the Somnyama Ngonyama series). Photographic wall mural from digital file, dimensions variable. © Zanele Muholi.