The Lover

The Lover celebrates the abundance of Queer life in all of its forms. It is an offering of remembrance to our queer ancestors. It is a reminder that queer life has deep roots in many indigenous cultures in, but certainly not limited to, Africa. It is a reminder that our indigenous languages, knowledge systems and ways of life nurture different forms of queerness, it is homophobia and transphobia that was imported to the continent 500 years ago.

“The Lover” intentionally uses anonymity as a way of saying that this could be anyone, it could even be me or you. Anonymity reminds us that it doesn’t matter who it is in these photographs, but rather what we see in the photograph that matters.

We carry the memory of our ancestors ways of life in our cells, their joy, their understanding. This work is a manifestation of the hope to collectively create, or maybe return to, a way of being that sees the beauty in life beyond the boundaries of prescribed imagination of ourselves.