[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Bona-III-ISGM-Boston-2019-1.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n
\n\tZanele Muholi, an acclaimed photographer and activist whose work celebrates the queer Black experience in South Africa and beyond, has won the Hasselblad Award, the world\u2019s leading photography prize, which carries a cash award of SEK 2,000,000 (approximately $218,000).<\/p>\n
\n\tAs part of the award, Muholi will receive a solo exhibition at the Hasselblad Center in Gothenburg, Sweden, along with an accompanying publication. The exhibition opens on October 10 and remains on view through April 24, 2027.<\/p>\n
\n\tMuholi, a self-proclaimed \u201cvisual activist,\u201d was born in 1972 under South Africa\u2019s apartheid regime, a system of oppression that continues to the artist\u2019s portraiture practice, which is at once tender and driven by political urgency. Muholi\u2019s subjects, rendered in soft grayscale and dramatic lighting, typically meet their viewer\u2019s gaze. They appear almost monumental, and act as symbols of the stories omitted from South Africa\u2019s popular imagination.<\/p>\n
\n\tSpeaking to ARTnews<\/em> in 2018, Muholi described their desire to illuminate the diverse histories that underpin South Africa. \u201cThey are history makers,\u201d Muholi said, referring to their collaborators\u2014activists, drag performers, and young, hopeful artists\u2014individuals often pushed to the margins by bigotry. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI\u2019m not just taking photos for fine arts\u2014I\u2019m producing content that speaks to South African visual history and to a group of people who, simply because of how they express themselves, won\u2019t be counted in history,\u201d they added. \u201cThat includes me, so I\u2019m working on content that\u2019s produced by us, for us, about us\u2014not dependent on other so-called experts.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe Hasselblad Foundation wrote in its citation that Zanele Muholi\u2019s photographs \u201care formally compelling, employing composition, colour, greyscale, and lighting to create an adept visual language that holds both strength and vulnerability.\u201d Their portraits, the foundation continued, challenge \u201cprejudice and discrimination while creating alternative visual histories \u2026 making Muholi a central figure in global queer visual culture.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tA ceremony for the Hasselblad Award will take place on October 9, followed by an artist talk at Moderna Museet in Stockholm on October 13.<\/p>\n \n\tIn a statement shared by the Hasselblad Foundation, Muholi said, \u201cThis prize is not mine alone. I carry it with the many faces, names, and histories that have trusted me with their stories. From Umlazi to every space where Black LGBTQIA+ people continue to fight to exist freely, this recognition affirms that our lives are worthy of being seen\u2014not as statistics, not as shadows, but as full human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n [analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/zanele-muholi-wins-2026-hasselblad-award-1234775981\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Bona-III-ISGM-Boston-2019-1.jpg?w=1024″] Zanele Muholi, an acclaimed photographer and activist whose work celebrates the queer Black experience in South Africa and beyond, has won the Hasselblad Award, the world\u2019s leading photography prize, which carries a cash award of SEK 2,000,000 (approximately $218,000). As part of the award, Muholi will receive a solo exhibition at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1811882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1811882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1811882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1811882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1811882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1811882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}