She wore heels that struck the concrete with a deliberate clarity, each step a punctuation. Bangles lined her arms, a soft chime of metal against metal, and from her shoulders rose a pair of wings. They were delicate, sculptural things, neither costume nor mere ornament but something in between: an extension of her, a declaration that she had chosen to arrive differently tonight. The wings caught the amber light, turning with her as she moved through the gathering, and the bubbles drifting past seemed to adjust their course around her, as though the air itself had learned a new choreography.

“You are the chosen one in your own fields, and now you are the chosen one in this village called home.” On 14 March 2026, the MAI team gathered at the Radisson Collection Hotel in Cape Town to celebrate Zanele Muholi — not only for their historic Hasselblad Award, but for the community they continue to build and hold.

There are some gatherings that are simply about showing up. And then there are gatherings where something quietly shifts — where a group of strangers becomes a collective, where a city stops being a backdrop and becomes part of the work itself. The MAI AiR Cape Town residency in February 2026 was the second kind.

For thirteen days, seventeen artists from four continents came together in Cape Town. We arrived with different practices, different histories. But somewhere along the way, something clicked. The city was not just where we stayed — it was what we worked with.