Zanele Muholi Brings 20 Years of Faces Home

There is something powerful about returning home with a story that started there.

For Zanele Muholi, that homecoming arrives in Johannesburg this October as Sibaningi brings two decades of Faces and Phases back to the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown — the very place where the landmark portrait series began in 2006.

Opening on Saturday, 17 October 2026, the exhibition arrives just days after Muholi receives the prestigious Hasselblad Award in Gothenburg, Sweden. But while the international recognition is significant, Sibaningi feels less like a victory lap and more like a return to the people and place that made the work possible.

A Homecoming With History

Sibaningi, an isiZulu word meaning “we are many”, is a fitting title for an exhibition centred on visibility.

Faces and Phases has spent 20 years documenting Black lesbian, queer and trans lives across South Africa and beyond. Rather than reducing those lives to stories of discrimination or violence, Muholi’s work has consistently insisted on something more fundamental: the right to be seen as whole human beings.

The portraits capture people living, working, loving, ageing and changing.

That makes this exhibition particularly relevant in a moment when conversations around identity, representation and belonging continue to shape South African culture.

And there is an important full-circle moment here. Muholi studied at the Market Photo Workshop, founded by David Goldblatt in 1989. It was within this Johannesburg creative environment that Faces and Phases began.

Twenty years later, the work returns with history behind it — and more history still being made.

More Than Photographs

One of the most compelling aspects of Sibaningi is the way it approaches the archive as something living.

Early portraits are placed alongside later images of participants, allowing audiences to witness changes in gender expression, relationships, careers, homes, age and circumstance.

The photographs therefore become more than individual portraits. Together, they form a visual record of lives unfolding over time.

New faces also enter the series, reinforcing the idea that the archive is never truly finished.

For a younger generation navigating questions of identity and representation online and offline, that idea resonates. What we document today becomes part of what future generations use to understand who we were.

From Johannesburg to the World

Muholi’s international recognition makes the Johannesburg exhibition even more significant.

The Hasselblad Award — regarded as one of photography’s most prestigious honours — comes with SEK 2 million, a gold medal, a Hasselblad camera and a solo exhibition at the Hasselblad Center running until April 2027.

Muholi is the first Black queer African photographer to receive the award.

Yet Sibaningi deliberately brings that global moment back to Johannesburg.

The exhibition opens during Africa Pride month and forms part of the Muholi Art Institute‘s ongoing work around photography, education and archives.

On opening day, Muholi will speak at midday before the exhibition officially opens. Entry is free, making the opportunity to experience two decades of South African visual history accessible to a broad Johannesburg audience.

We Are Many

Sibaningi ultimately feels like both an archive and an affirmation.

Twenty years after Faces and Phases began, the message remains clear: these lives were here, are here and will continue to be here.

Back in the city where the series started, Muholi isn’t simply looking backwards.

They are showing Johannesburg how much has changed, how much remains unfinished — and why documenting the present still matters.

Sibaningi runs from 17 October to 5 December 2026 at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg. Entry is free.