World-renowned visual activist and photographer Prof. Zanele Muholi presents Brave Beauties: Stories of Identity, Visibility & Courage at Constitution Hill in Johannesburg from 20 August to 24 September 2026.
The exhibition, curated by prominent transgender activist and artist Yaya Mavundla, explores identity, visibility, belonging and the place of transgender women in South Africa’s living heritage.
A powerful archive of trans lives
Brave Beauties is Muholi’s ongoing photographic essay documenting and celebrating transgender women and gender-nonconforming people in South Africa since 2014.
The Constitution Hill exhibition marks the first time the project has been presented as a dedicated solo exhibition, giving Muholi’s powerful visual archive of Black LGBTQIA+ lives a space of its own.
Opening during Women’s Month and running into Heritage Month, the exhibition asks important questions about gender, identity, representation and whose stories become part of South Africa’s collective memory.
At its heart is the visibility of transgender women as women. The portraits celebrate their dignity, beauty, resilience, joy, self-expression and agency, challenging narrow ideas of womanhood and representations that reduce trans lives to discrimination and violence.
Speaking about the exhibition, Zanele Muholi says: “Brave Beauties challenges the erasure of trans women’ stories and insists that their lives, resistance and contributions belong in the visual and historical archive.”
Muholi also stresses the importance of documenting and preserving transgender women’s existence as part of the diverse history of African women.
Claiming a place in South Africa’s heritage
Together, the photographs create a living archive of people who have insisted on their right to exist, be visible and define themselves.
The project responds to historical gaps in representation by allowing transgender women to play an active role in shaping how they are seen and remembered.
This takes on particular significance during Heritage Month. The exhibition challenges the idea that heritage exists only in monuments, institutions and accounts of the past. It argues that heritage also lives through people’s experiences, relationships, memories, struggles, creativity and contributions.
By placing transgender women within this visual archive, Brave Beauties asserts their belonging and historical presence as part of South Africa’s evolving cultural heritage.
From imprisonment to liberation
The exhibition’s setting in the Women’s Jail at Constitution Hill adds another layer of meaning.
The historic site carries memories of imprisonment, resistance and the struggle for freedom. Against this backdrop, Muholi’s portraits explore another form of liberation: the freedom to define oneself, live openly, belong and tell one’s own story.
Mavundla brings an especially personal perspective to the exhibition. As both its curator and a participant in Brave Beauties, she approaches the project from within the archive.
“Having been part of Brave Beauties since its inception, I have witnessed first-hand the power of seeing our lives, identities and stories documented. As both a participant and curator, I understand the responsibility of protecting this archive and ensuring that our stories are not erased, distorted or told without us,” she says.
“Brave Beauties is more than photography, it is an act of visibility, resistance and self-determination. It gives us the power to be seen, to be celebrated and, most importantly, to define how we are remembered.”
Who gets to be remembered?
Ultimately, Brave Beauties asks who gets remembered, who gets represented and who belongs within South Africa’s heritage.
By placing historically marginalised people at the centre of the archive, the exhibition offers an affirmation of their presence, agency and right to shape their own stories.
Brave Beauties: Stories of Identity, Visibility & Courage runs at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, from 20 August to 24 September 2026.
