Tate Modern is known for its enthusiastic use of trigger warnings , but this really is an exhibition to approach with caution. Let’s not worry too much about the image of a woman wearing a generously sized strap-on dildo in the first room, or the Vaseline-smeared sex scenes, or the colossal bronze sculpture representing the full magnificence of the clitoris. These moments of frank humour and tenderness are a relief from the overwhelming horror of queer Black experience in South Africa, as described by the exceptional eye of the photographer and visual activist Zanele Muholi.

Some images are more overtly troubling than others: a thigh is marked with a vast, vertical scar, inflicted with neat efficiency as the prelude to an unnamed but evidently hate-filled sexual atrocity; elsewhere, a naked figure crouches over a basin of soapy water. Moving easily between the cool even-handedness of documentary, and the richly meaningful language of western art history, Muholi’s black and white photographs of people washing themselves after a sexual assault summon the bathing women of Degas with considerable impact. Muholi, who uses they/them pronouns, shields their subjects with anonymity, sparing them from the leering voyeurism implied by Degas’s women.

The horrific concept of corrective rape looms so large here that Muholi’s consideration for the dignity of their subjects feels so much more than a necessary act of decency, and stands instead as a lone marker of faith in the goodne.