Sophia Al-Maria Author

Zanele Muholi (born in Umlazi, Durban, South Africa, 1972) is a visual activist and photographer, cofounder of the Forum for the Empowerment of Women, and founder of Inkanyiso, a forum for queer and visual media. Muholi has won numerous awards, including France’s Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2017; ICP Infinity Award for Documentary and Photojournalism (2016); Fine Prize for an emerging artist at the 2013 Carnegie International; and a Prince Claus Award (2013). Their Faces and Phases series was shown at dOCUMENTA (13) and the 55th Venice Biennale, and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in 2015. The first volume of Somnyama Ngonyama (Aperture, 2018) was awarded the Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Award in 2019. Muholi is an honorary professor at the University of the Arts Bremen, Germany. They are represented by Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg, and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York. Renée Mussai is artistic director and chief curator at the Walther Collection, after more than twenty years as senior curator and head of collection at Autograph, London. A curator, writer, and scholar of photography and lens-based media with a special interest in African and diasporic lens-based Black feminist and queer visual arts practices, Mussai has organized internationally traveling exhibitions such as Zanele Muholi’s Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness and the critically acclaimed Black Chronicles programs. Her publications include Lina Iris Viktor's award-winning monograph Some Are Born to Endless Night—Dark Matter (2020) and the forthcoming Eyes That Commit: Black Women and Non-Binary Photographers—A Visual Survey (2023). Mussai is currently research associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, University of Johannesburg; associate lecturer at University of the Arts London; and former guest curator and fellow at the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. Sophia Al-Maria is a Qatari American artist, writer, and filmmaker living and working in London. Her writing has appeared in Triple Canopy, Bidoun, and Harper’s magazine and is anthologized in Sad Sack: Collected Writing by Sophia Al-Maria (2019). Al-Maria’s work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the New Museum, New York; 2013 Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; Waqif Art Centre, Doha, Qatar; and Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, among other venues.   Phoebe Boswell is a multidisciplinary artist based in London. She has had solo exhibitions at Autograph, London; Göteborgs Konsthall, Gothenburg; and New Art Exchange, Nottingham, UK. Her works are held in public and private collections, including the UK Government Art Collection and the Studio Museum, New York. Tina Campt leads the Black Visualities Initiative at the Cogut Institute for Humanities and is the founding convenor of the Practicing Refusal Collective and the Sojourner Project. She is the author of more than five books, including A Black Gaze: Artists Changing How We See (2022) and Listening to Images (2017), and coeditor of Imagining Everyday Life: Enactments in Vernacular Photography (2020). She currently holds a joint appointment at Princeton University’s Department of Art and Archaeology and at the university’s Lewis Center for the Arts as the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor in the humanities. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a writer, independent scholar, poet, activist, and educator based in Durham, North Carolina. She is the author of several books, including Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (2022) and Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity (2017), and is coeditor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Frontlines (2016). In 2020, Gumbs was awarded the National Humanities Center Fellowship for her forthcoming book, The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde: A Cosmic Biography. Aluta Humbane is a composer, producer, musician, photographer, LGBTIQ+ activist, and playwright.  Humbane is a resident vocalist at the Playhouse Company in Durban, South Africa, and is the director of Injongo Performing Arts in Durban. Ntsiki Jacobs is a researcher, freelance writer, and editor at the Muholi Art Institute. Jacobs is also a business development consultant, working with the National Department of Transport in South Africa. Porsha Olayiwola is a writer, performer, educator, and curator. An Individual World Poetry Slam champion and the artistic director at MassLEAP, a literary youth organization, Olayiwola is the current poet laureate for the city of Boston, and the author of the collection i shimmer sometimes, too (2019). Lola Olufemi is a Black feminist writer and Stuart Hall Foundation researcher based at the Centre for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster, UK. Her work focuses on the uses of the feminist imagination and its relationship to cultural production, political demands, and futurity. She is author of Feminism Interrupted: Disrupting Power (2020) and Experiments in Imagining Otherwise (2021), and is a member of ‘bare minimum,’ an interdisciplinary anti-work arts collective. Legacy Russell is a curator and writer, and the executive director and chief curator of The Kitchen, New York. Formerly she was the associate curator of exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Russell is the author of Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto (2020), and her writing has been recognized by the Thoma Foundation 2019 Arts Writing Award in Digital Art, a 2020 Rauschenberg Residency Fellowship, and a 2021 Creative Capital Award. Duncan Whyte is an independent graphic designer from London, living and working in France. His most recent work includes the first volume of Somnyama Ngonyama (Aperture, 2018) and Flint Is Family in Three Acts by LaToya Ruby Frazier (2022) and Baldwin Lee (2022), both of which were shortlisted for Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook of the Year.