There are artists who make work. And then there are artists who make history. Zanele Muholi has spent more than two decades doing both and on 18 July 2026, for the first time in years, they are bringing that history home. Kanye Nawe — Alongside You, a landmark solo exhibition spanning photography, sculpture, and the award-winning documentary Difficult Love, opens at Southern Guild Cape Town in Silo 5 at the V&A Waterfront on 18 July and runs until 10 September 2026. It is the most significant homecoming in South African contemporary art this decade. It is twenty years of visual activism, courage, and radical love gathered under one roof, offered freely to the people whose stories it has always been about. Entry is free. There is no excuse not to go.
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The exhibition occupies the entire gallery at Silo 5, creating a total environment that functions less like a conventional art show and more like a living archive of Black Queer life in South Africa and across the world, of visibility claimed in the face of erasure, of intimacy documented in defiance of violence, of memory kept alive in the faces of people who were told their stories did not matter.
This homecoming arrives at a deeply meaningful time. The exhibition opens in the same month as Muholi’s birthday, turning the launch into a personal celebration. It also marks twenty years of the landmark series Faces and Phases, twenty years since the loss of Muholi’s nephew Nkanyiso and friends to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and twenty years since South Africa’s Civil Union Act. These personal milestones sit alongside national commemorations: the 70th anniversary of the 1956 Women’s March, the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Soweto Uprising, and thirty years of democracy.
Muholi said: “Coming home this year feels profound. South Africa is remembering the Women’s March of 1956, fifty years since Soweto, and thirty years of democracy. At the same time I celebrate twenty years of Faces and Phases and my own birthday month. Kanye Nawe is about being together, about oneness. I am grateful to share this work with my people.”
The exhibition brings together key bodies of work including Faces and Phases, Only Half the Picture, Being, Mo(u)rning, ZaVa, LiZa, and the powerful self-portrait series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness). New bronze sculptures extend these themes into three dimensions, exploring protection, ancestry, vulnerability and strength.
At the heart of the show is Faces and Phases, Muholi’s ongoing portrait project started in 2006 to counter hate crimes and invisibility faced by Black LGBTQIA+ communities. What began in South Africa has grown into a global record of lives, love, and resilience. The Cape Town installation features early South African portraits alongside recent works from London, Porto, Panama City, Los Angeles, Salvador, São Paulo and Venice.
Muholi highlights the deeper purpose: “Art is a form of education. Through these images we teach ourselves and others to see, to remember, and to care. Every portrait, every sculpture carries a story that belongs to our collective history. This is how we build dignity and understanding for generations to come. Ngiyabonga Mina.”
For South Africans, this is a rare and long-awaited chance to experience Muholi’s full body of work on home soil. After captivating audiences at major institutions worldwide and receiving the 2026 Hasselblad Award, Kanye Nawe offers a powerful homecoming that affirms the importance of Black Queer stories in South Africa’s cultural landscape. Free entry for all.
Exhibition Details
Kanye Nawe – Alongside You
18 July – 10 September 2026
Southern Guild Cape Town
Silo 5, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town
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