A major exhibition situating LGBTQ+ artists within African and diasporic art histories through collaboration, joy and lived experience
Tobi Onabolu, Dear Black Child, 2021. Video, 18 min. 41 sec. Courtesy of the artist.
‘Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art’ brings together nearly sixty works by LGBTQ+ artists from Africa and its diasporas, presented at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art. Opening in January 2026, the exhibition positions queer artistic practice not as a marginal or recent phenomenon, but as integral to African art histories across time, geography and medium. Developed through sustained dialogue with artists and communities, the exhibition foregrounds lived experience, artistic agency and the right to visibility within cultural narratives that have often excluded or underwritten these histories.
Rather than adopting a corrective or oppositional framework alone, ‘Here’ insists on presence as a starting point. The exhibition’s title operates as both a declaration and a refusal, asserting that LGBTQ+ artists have always been part of African cultural life. Through painting, photography, sculpture, installation, video and digital media, the exhibition frames pride and belonging as shared human concerns, articulated through specific social, political and cultural contexts.
Queer presence within African and diasporic art histories
The exhibition includes works by artists such as Zanele Muholi, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Leilah Babirye, Jim Chuchu and Ṣọlá Olúlòde, among others, spanning multiple generations and regions. While their practices differ widely, they are connected by a commitment to articulating identity, intimacy and selfhood within environments where social and legal freedoms vary significantly.
By situating these works within the broader canon of African and diasporic art, ‘Here’ challenges narratives that treat queer experience as external to African histories. Instead, it emphasises continuity, complexity and multiplicity, positioning LGBTQ+ artistic production as part of an ongoing, dynamic cultural record rather than a discrete or exceptional category.
Collaboration, care and curatorial methodology
Central to the exhibition’s development is a collaborative curatorial process grounded in long-term engagement. Through studio visits, interviews and sustained dialogue, the curators have worked closely with artists to build relationships based on trust, care and mutual respect. This approach is reflected in the exhibition’s emphasis on artists’ voices and its resistance to reductive framing.
Co-curated by Serubiri Moses and Kevin D. Dumouchelle, ‘Here’ is shaped by an expansive geographical and conceptual scope. Moses’s research prioritised artists working beyond frequently cited centres, broadening the exhibition’s continental and diasporic reach. Dumouchelle’s parallel work on a related publication further situates the exhibition within an institutional commitment to scholarship, documentation and long-term impact.
Media, intimacy and the politics of visibility
Across the exhibition, artists engage a wide range of media to address themes of family, spirituality, resistance, intimacy and joy. Works such as Ṣọlá Olúlòde’s richly textured paintings foreground tenderness and relationality, while other practices employ portraiture, performance and digital forms to negotiate self-representation and public visibility.
Rather than presenting trauma as the dominant register, ‘Here’ places equal emphasis on pleasure, connection and futurity. In doing so, it reframes visibility not solely as exposure to risk, but as an assertion of dignity and creative autonomy. The exhibition thus complicates prevailing narratives around queer life, offering a more expansive account of how belonging is imagined and sustained.
Institutional responsibility and art historical inclusion
As the largest exhibition on this subject to date, ‘Here’ reflects a broader institutional reckoning with the limits of art historical canons. The National Museum of African Art positions the exhibition as an extension of its founding mission to foster cross-cultural understanding, while acknowledging museums’ responsibility to tell more nuanced and inclusive histories.
By embedding LGBTQ+ artistic practices within African and diasporic art histories, the exhibition contributes to a necessary rethinking of how those histories are written, collected and displayed. ‘Here’ does not propose a definitive account. Instead, it opens space for ongoing dialogue, insisting that recognition and belonging are not acts of generosity, but matters of historical accuracy and cultural responsibility.
‘Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art’ opened on 23 January 2026 and is on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, until 23 August 2026. For more information, please visit the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art.
