Amalanga Awafani (Days Are Not the Same)

24 January 2026

Casa Santa Ana Foundation, Panama City

Amalanga Awafani (Days Are Not the Same) is an exhibition about time, survival, and the unevenness of lived experience. The title, drawn from isiZulu, speaks to a simple but profound truth: no two days carry the same weight. Some arrive with ease, others with grief, uncertainty, violence, or quiet endurance.

For many Black, queer, and marginalised people, this unevenness is not abstract — it is lived in the body, in memory, and in how one moves through environments and spaces.

Through their work, Zanele Muholi understands identity not as something fixed, but as something shaped by days — by phases, and by moments of visibility and invisibility.

Working across photography, portraiture, and self-representation, Muholi records what it means to exist in a world that does not always offer safety, recognition, or belonging. Each image becomes a trace of a particular moment — a day when someone chose to be seen, to speak, or to remember themselves.

Amalanga Awafani also speaks to collective memory. These images do not stand alone; they speak to one another, forming an archive of presence.

Together, they resist the historical erasure of Black and queer lives, insisting that every day lived — however fragile — leaves a mark.

Curated by Ruth Seopedi Motau, the exhibition is an invitation to look slowly.

To recognise that behind every image is a life shaped by many days — some joyful, some painful, none identical. In witnessing these moments, we are asked to honour the complexity of being human, and to remember that survival itself is a form of courage.