5 Fantastic Places to See LGBTQ+ Art in South Africa
Nowhere is the innovation, audacity, and diversity of South Africa's LGBTQ+ community more apparent than across its exciting and exploding art scene, from world-renowned artists like Zanele Muholi to buzzworthy local creators like Jamal Nxedlana. Whether you're a dedicated art connoisseur or just looking for enrich your South African trip with amazing insights into its rich queer culture, here are the top places to see the country's best and boldest works by LGBTQ+ artists.
Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town
By far the ultimate place to take in the best in queer South African art is Cape Town's Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa — commonly known as Zeitz MOCAA, it's the world's largest museum of contemporary art from Africa and the African diaspora. Opened in 2017 in the Silo District of Cape Town's Victoria & Alfred Waterfront, the museum made it clear from the start that it wouldn't be holding back in its commitment to showcasing LGBTQ+ art and artists, focusing its initial year-long Curatorial Lab on queer rights in South Africa.
Right out of the gate, Zeitz MOCAA also chose to highlight the powerful work of the country's most famed queer artists, Durban native Zanele Muholi, for one of its inaugural exhibitions. Muholi's intense and revealing photographic portraits have brought the underrepresented faces of South Africa's LGBTQ+ community, especially Black lesbian and trans individuals from the urban townships, into top museums across the globe.
Other queer artists in Zeitz MOCAA's permanent collection include Athi-Patra Ruga, whose vibrantly colorful work across several media plays with concepts of utopia and dystopia, and explores the body in relation to sensuality and culture; Banele Khoza, a Swaziland native whose tender and moody watercolor drawings and digital illustrations are evocative of his own questions about identity and gender; Brett Charles Seiler, who hails from Zimbabwe and whose work unapologetically and often aggressively embraces gay sensuality and a queer sensibility, all the while using a muted color palette; and Nicholas Hlobo, a Cape Town native now living in Johannesburg who creates large and sprawling sculptural pieces that explore ethnicity, masculinity, and sexual identity. Zeitz MOCAA also holds work by American artist Kehinde Wiley, known for his gorgeous portraits of Black people that also pay homage to works of the Old Masters.
Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town
Across town in the heart of Cape Town is the Iziko South African National Gallery (or ISANG), opened in 1930 and housing many of the country's most prized and famed classic artworks. While the bulk of its collection is dedicated to Dutch, French and British works from the 17th to 19th centuries, the National Gallery has also hosted numerous exhibitions showcasing South African LGBTQ+ artists.
In 2019, ISANG presented performance and multimedia artist Gabrielle Goliath's immersive audio and visual installation This song is for.... The group photography exhibition Not the Usual Suspects showcased the work of a number of women and queer photographers in late 2018 and early 2019 — and overlapping that same time frame, ISANG showcased the multi-sensory installation When Dust Settles by gay Muslim artist Igshaan Adams, which incorporated sculpture, textiles, found objects, furniture and performance. And very controversially, in 2017 ISANG presented a provocative exhibition by genderqueer artist Dean Hutton (aka Goldendean) called F*** White People.
For South Africa's Pride Month in October 2020, ISANG promoted an innovative virtual Wikipedia edit-a-thon initiative called Edit Your Pride, urging the public to "edit and create Wikipedia articles profiling the work of artists and cultural practitioners and organisations in the LGBTQIA+ community."
Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg
Even older and larger than Cape Town's ISANG, the Johannesburg Art Gallery is the largest art museum on the African continent, and the first South African gallery to purchase a work by a Black artist in 1940. Located in Jo'burg's Braamfontein neighborhood, its holdings largely consist of pre-20th century works, but it also boasts a large contemporary collection of local and international art. Over the last decade it has hosted a number of exhibitions showcasing LGBTQ+ art and artists, including The Evidence of Things Not Seen, a nod to the James Baldwin book of the same name, which explored various forms of identity and the issues of feminism, queerness, revolution and culture in Black identity; and the Wolfgang Tillmans show Fragile.
Bubblegum Gallery, Johannesburg
In 2015, queer South African photographer Jamal Nxedlana co-founded Bubblegum Club, a groundbreaking South African magazine and creative agency dedicated to providing exposure to emerging artists and collectives. Out of its explosive success grew Jo'burg's Bubblegum Gallery, located in the Constitution Hill Precinct of the Braamfontein neighborhood, which offers developing artists the chance to exhibit their work and connect with the more established art market. Bubblegum often exhibits work by LGBTQ+ artists, and hosts queer events and parties around the city.
Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town & Johannesburg
One of South Africa's most esteemed private art galleries, with locations both in Cape Town's Woodstock neighborhood and Johannesburg's Braamfontein neighborhood (as well as in Amsterdam), Stevenson represents and regularly exhibits works by many of South Africa's most exciting LGBTQ+ artists, including Zanele Muholi, Andrew Putter, Jody Brand, and Steven Cohen.