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An invitation to slow down and look closely: this guide explores queer African art through themes of identity, performance, and belonging.

A close looking guide to African American–themed public art in Washington, DC, exploring how Blackness is represented in monuments, memory, and public space.

Explore Close Looking Guides that offer curated ways to engage with artworks, exhibitions, and visual culture through observation, reflection, and interpretation.

This month’s Spark spotlights Archaeology in the Community and artist Justine Swindell, whose project connects young learners with DC history through archaeology, art, and hands-on discovery.

A close looking guide to Muholi Muholi, Parktown, exploring Black self-representation, visibility, and belonging.

A close looking guide to Ombika’s painting, exploring spirituality, cultural heritage, and sacred selfhood in Mauritius.

A close looking guide to Le jardin des proies, exploring intimacy, secrecy, and queer desire through floral portraiture.

A close looking guide to Do You Have Work Tomorrow, examining surveillance, staged conversation, and queer risk in Cairo.

A close looking guide to Do You Have Work Tomorrow?, exploring digital intimacy, surveillance, and queer connection in Cairo.

A close looking guide to Weaponise the Internet, exploring digital identity, resistance, and future-facing power in queer African art.

A close looking guide to 2 Lizards, exploring intimacy, isolation, and companionship through animation and pandemic life.

A close looking guide to Zanele Muholi’s wedding documentary, exploring joy, queer belonging, and public celebration in South Africa.

A close looking guide to Nansamba II by Leilah Babirye, exploring belonging, lineage, and reclaimed identity in queer African art.

A close looking guide to The Surrogate, exploring family, pressure, and survival in queer African art.

A luminous film where Black joy becomes a practice of healing, community, and resistance, unfolding through movement, ritual, and shared experience.

Explore how artists navigate transformation, duality, and shifting identities, where boundaries between body, spirit, and self remain in motion.

A Janus-faced Kuyu figure brings together male and female forms, revealing how ritual, power, and identity move across boundaries of spirit and body.

Explore how artists challenge fixed ideas of identity and reimagine belonging as something created, performed, and continuously evolving.

Athi-Patra Ruga’s Versatile Queen: A Transhuman Proposal presents identity as performance, transformation, and possibility—where masculinity and femininity exist powerfully within the same body.