When I think of visual activism and the African LGBT community, I think of Neo Musangi of Kenya, a gender-nonconforming feminist academic, activist and performer. One of Neo's public performances called ‘Time and Space’ demonstrates gender fluidity. Neo gets to the centre of a public space with both male and female clothing. Neo performs each gender with a complete wardrobe. While this goes on, the audience, a variety of people, from civil servants and pedestrians, to passers-by, form a large crowd and surround Neo as Neo switches from male to female clothing. Each full display leaves the audience confused and wondering to which gender Neo belongs. Neo's visual activism forces live audiences to think about the blurred line between gender identities.

When I think of visual activism and the African LGBT community, I think of South Africa's Zanele Muholi and her long-term outstanding project called ‘Faces and Phases’. This project consists of a photograph series created between 2007 and 2014. These portraits ‘commemorate and celebrate lives of black queers’. The pictures are of mostly women Muholi met in her journeys all across South Africa. Her objective in these projects is to ‘counter invisibility, marginality and systemic silence’. She seeks, instead, to include LGBT people at the forefront of South Africa's liberation narrative. In these series of photographs, Muholi's mission is to create an archive of ‘visual, oral and textual materials that include black lesbians and the role they have played in our communities’ (Muholi ‘Faces and Phases’).

When I think of visual activism and the African LGBT community, I think of the timeline for movies like Dakan, released in 1997, the first Sub-Saharan African feature film on a gay theme. I think of the documentary Woubi Cheri, another pioneer film from Ivory Coast, released in 1998. Then, 2001 was the Senegalese movie, Karmen Gei, a movie that dared to feature a lesbian protagonist. There is Z-Yaanbo from Burkina Faso, which was released in 2011, Call Me Kuchu, from Uganda, released in 2012. I think further about that country's David Kato who was right in the middle of this movie project when he was murdered. The film was nevertheless completed. Then there is God Loves Uganda, released in 2013 and Veil of Silence, released in 2014 when Nigeria was on the verge of enacting the anti-same-sex marriage law.