Banned from Venice, Gabrielle Goliath's Elegy Opens in London
The artwork South Africa barred from the Venice Biennale is now on show in London.
Gabrielle Goliath's Elegy opened on 8 October at Ibraaz, a private foundation in London. It runs there until 17 January 2027, according to The Art Newspaper. The London run is long.
Elegy had been intended for the South African pavilion, the country's national showcase, at the Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy. The Biennale is the large international art exhibition held every two years. In January, South Africa's sport, arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie cancelled Goliath's participation. He called the inclusion of a suite, one section within the larger work, commemorating Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada "divisive". Abu Nada was killed in an Israeli airstrike in October 2023.
After the cancellation, Ibraaz joined with the Bertha Foundation to stage Elegy elsewhere in Venice. That presentation ran at the Chiesa di Sant'Antonin in Venice from the Biennale's opening in May until the end of July.
The Biennale version wove together three histories. It addressed rape culture in South Africa, the Herero and Nama genocide in Namibia, and the death of Abu Nada.
Elegy is a multi-channel video and sound installation, a work shown across several screens with coordinated audio. Goliath has built it over more than a decade as a ritual performance and installation project. Her website describes the full work as a 10-channel installation, and she has staged live performances linked to it across South Africa and internationally.
In London, the work is presented in Ibraaz's Minassa space. Three of its films each show a woman singing a single note until her lungs falter, as described by The Guardian. Ibraaz says the wider project gathers collective acts of mourning around lives and histories marked by violence, erasure and structural loss, as noted on Ibraaz.
Ibraaz describes its own programme as spanning art, ideas, music, film, publishing, food, prayer and debate.
For visitors unfamiliar with the form, the experience is durational. Performers hold one note for as long as breath allows. Then silence returns.
After London, Elegy is due to travel. Listings say it is scheduled for ICA Milano, the institute for contemporary art in Milan, Italy, in January 2027, and for Sharjah Biennial 17 in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, in the same month.
