Faces and Phases Expands Beyond South Africa: Muholi Brings the Project to the United Kingdom

After years of documenting the lives, resilience, and beauty of South Africa’s LGBTQIA+ community, internationally acclaimed visual activist Zanele Muholi has expanded their long-running project Faces and Phases to other parts of the world with the latest edition now unfolding in the United Kingdom.

Launched in 2006, Faces and Phases began as a deeply personal response to the lack of Black trans and queer visual archive in South Africa. Through striking black-and-white portraits, the series honours individuals who have often been marginalized or erased from dominant narratives. Each image, intimate yet powerful, stands as a testament to survival, visibility, and pride.

Now, nearly two decades later, Faces and Phases continues to grow, crossing borders and documenting new communities that echo similar struggles and triumphs. The series has gone beyond its South African roots with powerful presentations and collaborations at Tate Modern (London), and new chapters emerging in Brazil, Portugal, and Los Angeles. Each iteration deepens the project’s reach, connecting global queer communities through shared stories of visibility, identity, and defiance. These expansions reaffirm Muholi’s commitment to building an international archive of queer existence — one that insists on recognition, dignity, and solidarity across borders.

The UK edition features over 20 participants, each contributing their unique story to this ever-evolving visual archive. The expansion marks an important milestone in Muholi’s global vision: a recognition that queer existence, resistance, and love transcend geography.

“Queer people exist everywhere,” says Muholi. “Our activism is not only for South Africa, but for every living queer being who faces social ostracism for being who they are. The aim is to create a space of belonging, to honour our shared humanity, and to challenge the systems that continue to silence us.”

The Faces and Phases UK project underscores Muholi’s ongoing commitment to visual activism, an approach that merges art, advocacy, and community-building. It reflects a deep understanding that photography can be both documentation and intervention; both personal narrative and political act.

The expansion into the UK also highlights the interconnectedness of queer struggles globally from issues of migration, racism, and displacement to the ongoing fight for recognition and equality. Through these portraits, Muholi not only builds a transnational archive of faces and stories but also reaffirms the universality of queer existence and the need for collective solidarity.

This new chapter has been realised through collaboration with Common Press and Queer Circle, through this partnership, Faces and Phases UK becomes not just an exhibition, but a collective act of visibility — an intergenerational and transnational dialogue between communities bound by courage and love.

As Muholi continues to expand Faces and Phases to other parts of the world, their message remains clear: to see, to honour, and to remember. Every portrait becomes an act of love, a refusal to be forgotten and a declaration that queer lives, in all their forms, matter everywhere.

The exhibition runs until 16 November 2026, offering visitors a chance to engage deeply with the stories that shape this ongoing archive of identity, resilience, and belonging.