Zanele Muholi: Faces and Phases—Bay Area

Zanele Muholi: Faces and Phases—Bay Area marks the 20th anniversary of visual activist Zanele Muholi’s landmark portrait archive through a translocal exhibition staged across both San Francisco and Oakland, alongside new commissions by six Bay Area LGBTQIA+ artists and collectives of color. Presented at the Black Panther Party Museum and TnT Art Lab through a partnership between Artist As First Responder and Conjunction Arts, the project bridges two historic epicenters of community self-determination born in 1966: the founding of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in Oakland and the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot in San Francisco’s Tenderloin.

Grounded in Muholi’s Bay Area residency, which positions the artist as a primary responder within local networks of sanctuary and social organizing, the exhibition extends far beyond institutional walls through architectural video projections, somatic street performances, soundscapes, and site-specific interventions woven throughout the Tenderloin in San Francisco, Oakland’s Uptown Arts District, and Deep East Oakland. This interdisciplinary offering transforms the archive into an active, tactical form of public resistance. By mapping Black and brown queer visibility directly onto the urban landscape, Zanele Muholi: Faces and Phases—Bay Area reframes two decades of visual activism into a living infrastructure for spatial justice, collective healing, and self-determined futures.

The exhibition at the Black Panther Party Museum in Oakland is curated by Ashara Ekundayo in partnership with Artist As First Responder.

The exhibition at TnT Art Lab in San Francisco is curated by Bradley McCallum and Ashara Ekundayo. This presentation runs from March 2 to July 2, 2027.