What does it mean to be seen on your own terms?

For two decades, South African visual activist Prof. Zanele Muholi has answered that question with a camera in hand, building a living archive of Black LGBTQIAPN+ life against centuries of erasure. This Pride Month, Brave Beauty brings over 100 photographs, self-portraits, and sculptural works to the Museu de Arte do Rio — fresh from its acclaimed run at IMS Paulista — and deepens the dialogue with new pieces created on Brazilian soil. Here, hands speak louder than words: they gesture, hold, welcome, and remember. More than a retrospective, this is a space of testimony, mourning, and defiant joy. Step into an exhibition where beauty is not decoration but courage, and every portrait is an act of insistence.

What does it mean to build an archive of those the world has tried to erase? At the Beyra Festival, Prof. Zanele Muholi offered an answer rooted in intention, community, and the responsibility to speak for those who can no longer speak for themselves.

“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.