STAR!BANI?

STAR!BANI? (2022–ongoing) is a photographic series exploring the complex duality of Black

queer life in South Africa. Set within the ‘township’, a space historically shaped by segregation and survival.

The work reflects on what it means to exist in environments where

community can be both a source of belonging and danger.

The title comes from the Zulu word stabane, a term used as a slur for queer and

gender-nonconforming people. In reshaping it as STAR!BANI?, it resists its violence and

turns into a affirmation and a question of becoming.

In South Africa, queerness exists within an ongoing paradox. The Constitution is one of the

most progressive in the world, yet LGBTIAQ+ people continue to face systemic violence, exclusion,

and erasure.

The work moves through this

contradiction, observing how queer youth navigate space, safety and belonging.

STAR!BANI? is an internal dialogue about identity. An interrogation of the fragmented

experience of being - the ongoing negotiation of masculinity / intimacy / femininity / freedom in

a world that insists on binaries.

It sits with what it means to exist quietly, to hold softness where

hardness is expected, and to be seen without needing to explain.