Opening on 5 May 2026 at the residence of Trisja Malisoff and Tony Podesta in the Castello district of Venice and on view until 10 May, the exhibition is conceived as an off-site intervention that activates the city with a powerful South African artistic presence at a moment when the official South African Pavilion has been withdrawn.

Bringing together over 200 black-and-white portraits selected from 2006 to the present, the presentation foregrounds the cumulative scale of Faces and Phases as a living archive. Installed across various rooms, the works generate a palpable sense of collective presence – at once intimate and expansive – while underscoring the relational nature of the project, each image both singular and part of a broader, collective narrative. The unframed display evokes modes of protest, recalling the immediacy of posters, placards, and collectively assembled images, reinforcing the project’s grounding in visual activism. A public-facing banner along the canal extends the work into the fabric of the city, asserting presence and continuity in the face of institutional absence.

Muholi’s recognition as a Hasselblad Award Laureate marks a significant moment for documentary practice and Queer visibility, acknowledging both their formal and conceptual contributions to contemporary photography and their sustained commitment to representing Black LGBTQIA+ communities with dignity and self-determination.

In this context, Faces and Phases stands as a radical reworking of documentary modes, shifting the genre from observation to collaboration, from marginalisation to presence.

Faces and Phases: A Living Archive, 20 Years On

Initiated in 2006, Faces and Phases is an ongoing portrait series that has become a critical visual archive of Black LGBTQIA+ lives. Rooted in Muholi’s self-defined practice of “visual activism,” the work addresses the historical erasure of Black Queer subjectivities, foregrounding dignity, self-representation, and collective memory. Now comprising hundreds of portraits, the series documents participants across time and geography, and affirms what Muholi has described as the necessity of “making ourselves visible” in order to exist within history.

As Tate Modern director Catherine Wood has noted, Muholi’s portraits “insist on the presence of lives too often rendered invisible,” foregrounding a documentary practice grounded in collaboration and mutual recognition. Similarly, MoMA curator Oluremi C. Onabanjo describes the series as “a vital archive that interweaves aesthetic rigor with social activism, reframing Black Queer visibility across temporal and spatial boundaries.”

A Return to Venice

Muholi’s engagement with the Venice Biennale spans multiple participations over the past two decades, alongside major institutional presentations across Europe, including at the Tate Modern (London), Fundação de Serralves (Porto), MUDEC (Milan), Maison Européenne de la
Photographie (Paris), Gropius Bau (Berlin), the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), and others.

Running parallel to the exhibition, Muholi will undertake a mobile photographic activation across Venice. Drawing on the legacies of 1950s- 60s West African studio photographers like Malick Sidibé and Seydou Keïta, Muholi will operate a mobile studio with a pop-up backdrop, producing site-responsive portraits in public and semi-public spaces. As in these earlier traditions, the encounter becomes both performative and collaborative; a temporary stage on which identity is articulated and affirmed.

Taking place from 6–10 May in various locations across the city, the activation will focus on members of Venice’s Queer community, with particular attention to Black LGBTQIA+ individuals. In doing so, the project extends Faces and Phases beyond its origins in South Africa and across an expanding network of global nodes, including Harare, London, Amsterdam, Porto, Toronto, New York, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Panama City, São Paulo, and Salvador. The Venice iteration further extends this transnational archive into a new context.

At its core is a sustained engagement with the ethics and politics of exchange. For each participant, Muholi will produce two Polaroid portraits: one retained for the archive and one gifted to the sitter. This gesture resists extractive image-making, instead foregrounding reciprocity, coauthorship,
and mutual recognition. The image becomes both document and offering, an ephemeral moment made tangible as a shared keepsake.

Muholi’s Venice activation extends the project’s material and conceptual reach. If the exhibition reflects its archival depth, the mobile studio activates its ongoing life: a process of encounter, return, and continuation. Together, the exhibition and activation position Venice as both site and
subject: an extension of Muholi’s long-term commitment to building a living, global archive of Black Queer existence, in which each portrait is not only an image, but a life.


Looking Ahead: Cape Town & Beyond

This Venice presentation precedes a major solo exhibition by Muholi at Southern Guild Cape Town (18 July – 28 August 2026). The exhibition will bring together key bodies of work, including new and recent portraits from Faces and Phases, sculptural and photographic works from Difficult
Love, and selections from Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness), Muholi’s internationally acclaimed self-portrait series.

This will be followed by a series of international presentations in 2026, including solo exhibitions at Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro (May – September 2026), and Foto Arsenal Wien, Vienna (29 August – 30 November 2026), both presented in partnership with Yancey Richardson.
Muholi is also preparing for a major solo retrospective at the Pinacoteca Agnelli in Turin, opening in 2028, further affirming their enduring impact on global contemporary art.