Gabrielle Goliath Sounds a Call to Action in Venice

In Venice’s Chiesa di Sant’Antonin, South African artist Gabrielle Goliath is presenting Elegy as South Africa’s unofficial pavilion for the 61st Biennale Arte, after Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie blocked her from officially representing the country in January. McKenzie, leader of the Patriot Alliance, said the proposed project would serve as a proxy for a geopolitical message about Israel’s war in Gaza; Goliath and curator Ingrid Masondo sued, but South African courts dismissed the case. The installation comprises three works from Goliath’s ongoing Elegy series: Elegy—Ipeleng Christine Moholane (2015), mourning a South African student killed in 2014; Elegy—for two ancestors (2024), recalling two women killed during Germany’s early-20th-century mass violence against the Ovaherero and Nama in Namibia; and Elegy—for a poet (2026), honoring Palestinian poet Heba Abunada, killed in an Israeli airstrike in Khan Yunis in October 2023. Each work uses vertically oriented LED screens showing women and genderqueer singers sustaining a single note in relay, with one screen for Moholane, two for the unnamed Nama women, and five for those killed in Gaza, including a final screen showing an empty dais as an invitation to participate or a marker of ongoing loss.

Read the full article at Hyperallergic