EYE ON THE PRIZE: Visual artist and activist Zanele Muholi wins top international award

Zanele Muholi’s visual activism has produced some of the most distinctive and memorable artistic contributions to contemporary South African culture. Their ability to foreground historically marginalised people in the LGBTQIA+ community has always evoked long-lasting emotional connections.

Muholi’s stark use of black-and-white imagery is always alluring and mystifying – drawing observers into the worlds contained in the frame. With a career this distinguished, many a writer (me included) has run out of superlatives to encapsulate their impact, value and artistry.

Where scribes run out of words, the world never seems to be short of ways to acknowledge, honour and celebrate an artistic powerhouse such as Muholi.

The latest is their recognition as the 2026 Hasselblad Award laureate. It is widely considered one of the world’s most significant photography awards, and Muholi is the 46th recipient. Formally presented in Gothenburg, Sweden, on 9 October 2026, the award comes with a gold medal, a Hasselblad camera and two million Swedish kronor (about R3.3-million). It is also accompanied by a major solo exhibition titled Zanele Muholi: Hasselblad Award 2026, which will run until 4 April next year.

“When this honour comes, I receive it on behalf of my community,” Muholi said. Their work has always looked beyond the self, even when they have been the subject of it.

‘Seminal work’

The exhibition draws from six of Muholi’s bodies of work, including Only Half the Picture, Faces and Phases and Somnyama Ngonyama. Each explores the visibility, dignity and beauty of black queer, lesbian and trans lives.

These three series exemplify Muholi’s evolution as an artist and an archivist. Faces and Phases is the most prominent of the three because of its intention as a counter-archive. Muholi has previously described it as extending beyond portraiture to become a means to document black queer and trans resistance and existence. Hasselblad has called it a seminal body of contemporary photographic work.

Only Half the Picture is most significant for its unequivocal links between visual activism and documenting violence. Premiered in 2002, it illustrates how Muholi’s art has long been rooted in testimony and the documentation of lived experience.

In Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness), Muholi moves from being the photographer to being the subject. This is, for me at least, the body of work most synonymous with the visual activist, in large part owing to the striking use of heightened skin tone and contrast. In this series, the question of representation of blackness and who holds agency over its representation is a noteworthy expansion from merely “who gets to be photographed?”

Narrative control

Visibility, representation, ar­­chi­­val importance and autonomy are key tenets of Muholi’s work throughout the years. These foundations have set their visual activism apart and brought a greater degree of narrative control over black queer and African representation to its rightful custodians – the people who live these realities.

Hasselblad’s recognition of Muholi’s visual activism is an institutional acknowledgement of both the work and the authority of those who tell these stories.

“This prize is not mine alone,” Muholi declares. “I carry it with the many faces, names and histories that have trusted me with their stories.” It is a significant responsibility – one that Muholi has carried consistently throughout their practice. Not in place of the community, but in service to it. DM

This story first appeared in our weekly DM168 newspaper, available countrywide for R39. The e-edition of Daily Maverick’s weekly newspaper, DM168, is now free for readers who are signed into their Daily Maverick account. Click here to access the latest e-edition.