After years of commanding the world’s most prestigious stages, including Tate Modern, Venice Biennale, Gropius Bau and receiving the 2026 Hasselblad Award, Zanele Muholi has come home – and is taking over the whole house.
Kanye Nawe, meaning “with you”, “alongside you” or more broadly “oneness” in isiZulu, occupies the entirety of Southern Guild in the Silo District. In view until 18 September 2026, the exhibition couldn’t have happened at a more timely moment – It coincides the 20th anniversary of Muholi’s seminal Faces and Phases project, 20 years since South Africa’s Civil Union Act legalised same-sex marriage, and the 30th anniversary of South Africa’s Constitution. And the scope of the exhibition reflects this – photography, sculpture and film spanning more than two decades of visual activism, presented in one living archive.
Curators initially translated Kanye Nawe literally but Muholi corrected them by singing “Kanye nawe, Nkosi yami” – a gospel hymn known to generations of Black mothers in mourning and joy. It represents a cry of surrender, faith, and divine companionship through life’s trials and triumphs
That anecdote is the key to the whole exhibition. Across diverse formats, the show “unfolds through this spirit of togetherness, suggesting that identity is forged through continual exchange with ancestry, place, and those around us.”
Kanye Nawe brings together early portraits made in South Africa alongside recent additions produced in London, Porto, Panama City, Los Angeles, Salvador, São Paulo, Venice, and Rio de Janeiro.
Two decades – one space
The exhibition traces the evolution of a practice that began as art but as urgent testimony. Visitors will walk through landmark bodies that have redefined contemporary art.
Faces and Phases (2006 – present): Now 20 years old, the ongoing portrait series began as a direct response to the violence, discrimination and invisibility faced by Black LGBTQIA+ South Africans. Hundreds of tender, frontal portraits assert existence as resistance.
Only Half the Picture, Being, Mo(u)rning, LiZa, and ZaVa: Early series that documented trauma (including hate crime scenes and funderals, but also intimacy. Family, pregnancy, love.
Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness): The internationally acclaimed self-portrait series where Muholi becomes image and author.
Three large-scale bronze sculptures extend Muholi’s exploration of memory, spirituality, ancestry, and survival into three dimensions. Monumental, tactile and ancestral, the bronzes examines vulnerability, protection and strength.
“Ultimately, Muholi’s oeuvre is driven by a commitment to asserting the enduring visibility of Black Queer existance. Now entering its third decade, this evolving practice continues to build a lasting testament to the communities it honours. The full spectrum of Kanye Nawe emerges by folding inward in Somnyama Ngonyama (“I am with myself”), turning toward intimacy and kinship in Only Half the Picture, Being, Mo(u)rning, and ZaVa (“I am with you”), and expanding into collective solidarity in Faces and Phases (“We are here together”). In doing so, the exhibition asks not only how these lives are remembered, but how they are carried forward.”
