Zanele Muholi's SIBANINGI: 20 Years of Faces and Phases

Hasselblad Award winner Zanele Muholi is marking 20 years of Faces and Phases with SIBANINGI, a free exhibition at Johannesburg's Market Photo Workshop.

The show opened on 17 October, barely a week after Muholi received the 2026 Hasselblad Award at a ceremony in Gothenburg, Sweden. Widely regarded as photography's most prestigious honour, the prize is worth SEK 2 million and includes a camera and a gold medal; Muholi is the 46th photographer to receive it. Their large solo show at the Hasselblad Center in Sweden continues until 4 April 2027.

The title, an isiZulu word that translates as “we are many”, is a fitting one for a project built on collective presence. Muholi began Faces and Phases in 2006, photographing Black queer, trans and gender-nonconforming South Africans in black and white, each sitter meeting the camera head-on. Over two decades they have revisited a large number of their sitters, sometimes years apart, so the series tracks change as much as it records faces: ageing, new relationships, new jobs, new homes, and in some cases loss. Work that began partly as a response to violence against queer South Africans has grown into one of the most sustained portrait archives of queer life on the continent.

The Johannesburg presentation hangs early portraits alongside recent ones and introduces sitters who were not part of the original series, a clear signal that the project is still growing. Lufuno Ramadwa curated the show for the Muholi Art Institute, and a new book on the series was launched with the exhibition. The opening was timed to coincide with Africa Pride Month.

The venue matters here. Muholi trained at the Market Photo Workshop in the early 2000s, and Faces and Phases took shape in the same city a few years later. The school was founded in 1989 by David Goldblatt, who in 2006 became the first South African to win the Hasselblad Award. Twenty years on, the second South African laureate is showing the work that earned the prize in the very place where their training began.

Visiting: SIBANINGI is on until 5 December 2026 at the Market Photo Workshop, Market Square, 138 Lilian Ngoyi Street, Newtown, Johannesburg. Entry is free, and visitors can park at the Newtown Junction mall. Check visiting hours with the Workshop before you go.

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