“Love is the key that takes cultures from oppression to joy. As a political unifier, the contract—love—takes on a liberating force,” artist Sabelo Mlangeni has said. Marking the 40th anniversary of New Photography, this exhibition brings together 13 artists and collectives who explore sites of belonging and forms of interconnectedness. Some of the artists weave personal stories within broader political histories to explore intergenerational memory. Others reimagine the idea of the archive to disrupt narratives of the past and imagine future communities.

Lines of Belonging highlights artists working in four cities that have existed as centers of life, creativity, and communion for longer than the nation states in which they are presently situated. From Kathmandu to New Orleans, Johannesburg to Mexico City, these creative practitioners offer slowness, persistence, and care as an antidote to the viral, profit-driven speed of contemporary image consumption, metadata technologies, and artificial intelligence.

Presenting their work at MoMA for the first time, the artists and collectives include Sandra Blow, Tania Franco Klein, and Lake Verea (Francisca Rivero-Lake and Carla Verea), who live and work in Mexico City; Gabrielle Goliath, Lebohang Kganye, Sabelo Mlangeni, and Lindokuhle Sobekwa, who live and work in Johannesburg; Nepal Picture Library, Sheelasha Rajbhandari, and Prasiit Sthapit, who live and work in Kathmandu; and L. Kasimu Harris, Renee Royale, and Gabrielle Garcia Steib, who live and work in New Orleans.

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