SCAD deFINE ART honoree conversation: Zanele Muholi at Trustees Theater

This event takes place off-site. See location details.

SCAD deFINE ART honoree Zanele Muholi joins arts advocate Phyllis Hollis for a conversation illuminating their boundary-pushing practice. An esteemed artist whose work explores notions of identity, community, and advocacy, Muholi recognizes the complex lived experiences of Black queer individuals. Through striking photographs, film, and sculpture, the artist reenvisions representation, offering an empathetic and emboldened perspective of the human condition.

Presenting the SCAD deFINE ART 2025 honoree conversation in connection with their exhibition Zanele Muholi at the SCAD Museum of Art, the artist will delve into their life and creative process, highlighting landmark bodies of work including the ongoing series Faces and Phases, Brave Beauties, and Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness). The conversation will reflect on the artist’s motivations as a self-described “visual activist” and their lifelong mission to platform marginalized people.

About the speakers
Zanele Muholi is a visual activist, humanitarian, and art practitioner who focuses on the documentation and celebration of the lives of South Africa’s Black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, Queer, and intersex communities. Born in Umlazi, Durban, and now residing in Cape Town, Muholi currently works between Durban, Johannesburg, and Cape Town. Between 2001 and 2003, they studied advanced photography at the Market Photo Workshop in Newtown, Johannesburg. They received an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège in Belgium (2023), were appointed honorary professor of video and photography at the University of the Arts/Hochschule für Künste in Bremen, Germany (2013), and completed an M.F.A. in documentary media at Ryerson University in Toronto (2009).

Beginning in 2006, Muholi responded to the continuing discrimination and violence faced by the LGBTQIA+ community by photographing Black lesbian and transgender individuals, resulting in the ongoing portrait project Faces and Phases. With these arresting portraits, Muholi hopes to offset the stigma and negativity attached to queer identity in African society. The more recent series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness) shifts the lens with Muholi becoming both participant and image-maker. Experimenting with different characters and archetypes, this ongoing series of self-portraits references specific events in South Africa’s political history. By exaggerating the darkness of their skin tone, Muholi reclaims their Blackness and offsets the culturally dominant images of Black women in the media today.

Muholi is invested in educational activism, community outreach, and youth development. In 2021, they set up the Muholi Art Institute (MAI) in Cape Town, which focuses on art education, following on from the founding of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women in 2002 and Inkanyiso, an online forum for Queer and visual media, in 2009. They facilitate access to art spaces for youth practitioners through projects such as Ikhono LaseNatali and continue to provide photography workshops for young women and in the townships through PhotoXP.

Awards and accolades received include an artist residency at UCLA’s Hammer Museum; the International Center of Photography’s Spotlights Award; the Spectrum International Prize for Photography; the Lucie Award for Humanitarian Photography; a fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society, U.K.; and France’s Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

Solo exhibitions of Muholi’s work have taken place at major institutions around the world, including Tate Modern, London; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavík; Gropius Bau, Berlin; the Seattle Art Museum; Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, Argentina; Luma Westbau, Zurich; Fotografiska Stockholm; the Durban Art Gallery, South Africa; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Brooklyn Museum, New York. The artist’s Faces and Phases series has been shown in the South African Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, at dOCUMENTA (13), and at the 29th São Paulo Bienal.

Muholi has exhibited extensively in group shows across the globe, including at the 22nd Biennale of Sydney; Fotografiska New York; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Canada; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; the National Gallery of Victoria Triennial, Melbourne, Australia; the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum, Spain; Luma Arles, France; S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Kulturhistorisk Museum, Oslo, Norway; The Walther Collection, Ulm, Germany; and Museo Amparo, Mexico, among others.

Publications include Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail the Dark Lioness (Aperture, 2018), which won the 2019 Best Photography Book Award from the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, and the follow-up Somnyama Ngonyama: Hail the Dark Lioness, Volume II (Aperture, 2024); Zanele Muholi, Faces and Phases 2006–14 (Steidl and The Walther Collection, 2014); Zanele Muholi: African Women Photographers #1 (Casa Africa and La Fábrica, 2011); Faces and Phases (Prestel, 2010); and Only half the picture (Stevenson, 2006).

Phyllis Hollis is a patron of the arts and an advocate for underrepresented artists, women artists, and art professionals. Launched in January 2020, her podcast and social media platform @Cerebral_Women offers unique content created to promote visual artists. Hollis is a trustee of GuildHall of East Hampton, N.Y., and formerly a trustee of Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and ArtTable. She is a member of the MoMA Black Arts Council executive committee and the American Friends of the Louvre. She has a proven track record successfully driving DEI initiatives and programs for nonprofits. Hollis has more than 30 years of experience in institutional investment banking and is the former CEO of a boutique broker-dealer in New York. She is an independent trustee of Diversified Healthcare Trust (DHC), a NASDAQ traded REIT.