Before We Were Here: A Gathering in Vienna

By Mpho Molefe

16 September 2026. Vienna — The night before We Are Here: Zanele Muholi opened at Foto Arsenal Wien, we found our way to one another.

16 September 2026. Vienna. Before We Are Here opened, we gathered at Mezekere. A room full of us — Black and brown, different shades, different stories, same space. We are here, too.

While it was happening, it felt like a simple night. Looking back, something much larger was moving beneath it.

A room made up of many shades of Black and brown. People from different places, carrying different histories, identities, languages and experiences, brought together by art, friendship, conversation and community. Some already knew each other. Some were meeting for the first time. There was laughter, storytelling, introductions, catching up, and that particular warmth that comes when you are surrounded by people who understand why it matters to make room for one another.

Faris Cuchi Gezahegn brought the evening together at Mezekere, a space where community, culture and possibility could meet.

For Faris, the encounter meant something deeply personal.

“It was precious.”

As a queer African, Ethiopian, and femme non-binary person, Faris has spent much of their life building spaces for queer cultural presence, memory, belonging, and possibility across Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa, the African continent, and the diaspora in Vienna.

To meet Muholi’s work from that place—and to welcome Muholi into a space Faris is also helping to build—became a full-circle moment.

Faris described Muholi’s work as “a blueprint, a language, a practice, a permission slip” for imagining African life beyond the violence of erasure. Those words speak to why Muholi’s ongoing practice of seeing, documenting and preserving lives so often left out of official histories and archives matters.

Hearing this in Vienna, among people whose own lives and journeys cross borders, made it especially moving.

Because creating visibility does not stop inside a gallery.

It happens around tables. In conversations. In friendships. In photographs. In homes and community spaces. In the choice to gather and say: we are here, too.

Faris reflected on welcoming Muholi into Mezekere, calling it “deeply affirming, humbling, and profoundly precious.”

Then came a sentence that stayed with us:

“There are moments when you realise you are not only witnessing history; you are standing inside a lineage you once needed to imagine for yourself.”

Maybe that is what made the evening so special.

Before Foto Arsenal opened its doors, before We Are Here met its audiences, there was already a coming together. A room full of Black and brown people, in all our different shades and stories, sharing space in Vienna.

A reminder that the encounters that mean the most sometimes happen before the opening, before the speeches, before the photographs are placed in the spotlight.

They happen when people find one another.

Thank you, Faris, for bringing us together at Mezekere. Thank you, Marit, and to everyone who came through, shared the evening, brought your stories, your laughter and your presence.

16 September 2026. A precious evening in Vienna. A room full of us.