Zanele Muholi on photography, memory and resistance

The camera, in the hands of those whose stories have been systematically erased, becomes something far more urgent than documentation. Zanele Muholi, a visual activist whose practice centres on Black identity and queer experience, spoke during Art Basel Conversations in Paris about this precise alchemy: how an image can refuse erasure and insist upon remembrance. Seated across from filmmaker and curator Pascale Obolo, Muholi traced the genealogy of archives shaped by marginalized narratives, those stories that exist in the spaces between official histories.

Their conversation turned on a deceptively simple observation: remembering oneself is the prerequisite for being remembered by others. For Muholi, this is not merely philosophical abstraction but the urgent work of visual activism. The camera becomes a tool of self determination, a means by which those rendered invisible by dominant narratives can claim their place in history. Obolo, whose curatorial practice similarly engages with archives and forgotten voices, brought her own understanding of how images function as resistance, how they can counter the deliberate forgetting that accompanies systems of power.

The full conversation, rich with the accumulated weight of their respective practices, examines who has the authority to document, who decides what is remembered and what fades into silence. Both artists understand that the image is never passive: it acts, it insists, it remembers on behalf of those whose voices might otherwise vanish. In the context of Art Basel’s ongoing commitment to fostering dialogue around contemporary visual culture, this conversation becomes a meditation on the political dimensions of looking itself, and the transformative potential of refusing to be forgotten.

Imagery courtesy of Art Basel (@artbasel).