Visual activist and artist Zanele Muholi is currently engaged in a month-long artist residency at the Hammer Museum at UCLA in Los Angeles.

With support from the Hammer, Muholi is continuing to expand on their Faces and Phases series, documenting members of Los Angeles’ LGBTQI+ community. Dating back to 2006, this iconic body of work originally involved building up a visual archive of Black queer and trans individuals in South Africa. However, Muholi began broadening their focus earlier this year to generate dialogue and build closer alliances between the queer communities of South Africa, London and LA. Portraits taken in London recently were installed in their solo exhibition at the Tate Modern over Frieze Week London, with many of the subjects present at a panel discussion held to launch the project.

“I’m looking forward to connecting with new people in the LA community and hearing their stories,” the artist said before leaving South Africa for the residency, which came about at the invitation of the Hammer Museum's outgoing director, Ann Philbin.

Muholi will also be adding to their ongoing series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness) while in LA. Using materials and objects sourced from their surroundings and shot in different locations around the world, this series sees Muholi experiment with different characters and archetypes. As both subject and maker, the artist refuses the exoticising gaze while challenging the under-representation of Black women and non-binary bodies.