{"id":1921364,"date":"2026-05-06T12:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T09:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1921364"},"modified":"2026-05-06T12:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T09:08:08","slug":"gabrielle-goliaths-canceled-south-africa-pavilion-opens-at-venice-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1921364","title":{"rendered":"Gabrielle Goliath’s Canceled South Africa Pavilion Opens at Venice Church"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Elegy_Gabrielle-Goliath-2026-courtesy-of-the-artist_-photo-Luca-Meneghel_4.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe South Africa Pavilion in the Giardini will sit empty for the entirety of this year\u2019s Venice Biennale, the result of a decision by culture minister Gayton McKenzie to cancel a planned pavilion by artist Gabrielle Goliath for being \u201chighly divisive.\u201d But while the building will remain closed, Biennale attendees can see the planned installation just half a mile away at the Chiesa di Sant\u2019Antonin. The show appears stronger for the move.<\/p>\n

\n\tInside the 12th-century church, Goliath has arranged several filmed iterations of\u00a0Elegy<\/em>, her ongoing performance series honoring victims of atrocities in South Africa and beyond, including killings of queer people and women, as well as the German-led genocide in colonial Namibia in the early 1900s. While the versions of\u00a0Elegy<\/em>\u00a0concerning the South African femicide and the Herero and Nama genocide appear as one- and two-channel works, a new edition mourning the death of Gazan poet Hiba Abu Nada\u2014who was killed by an Israeli airstrike in October 2023\u2014takes center stage. In that work, which is set across five screens at the center of the nave, Abu Nada is memorialized alongside other murdered Palestinians.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe acoustics of the church carry the voices of Goliath\u2019s women as they, one after another, hold a single note as a lament for the dead. Sometimes, the voices fuse into a collective, while at other times they differentiate, with one singer stopping to take a breath as another takes up her lament. The solemnity of the space, and the juxtaposition of Black and brown bodies beneath the idealized white Christian ones in the church\u2019s murals, clarifies the series\u2019s intervention.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile it has been suspected, though not confirmed, that McKenzie canceled the piece because of the Palestine content, Goliath was unequivocal at the exhibition\u2019s opening on Monday. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you read the minister\u2019s letters\u2014the first threatening letters I started getting in December\u2014he very explicitly said that the aspect that deals with femicide in South Africa and the Ovaherero and Nama genocide is acceptable,\u201d she told\u00a0ARTnews<\/em>. \u201cBut you need to remove the aspect that deals with Palestinian life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat the exhibition was canceled merely for mourning and commemorating Palestinians\u2014the new piece is barely different from past iterations, aside from its size\u2014speaks to the state of exception around Palestinian life is in public discourse and the art world.<\/p>\n

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Gabrielle Goliath\u2019s \u201cElegy\u201d at La Chiesa di Sant\u2019Antonin in Venice.<\/span>LUCA MENEGHEL<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t\u201cOver these ten years, I\u2019ve really been grappling with what is core to the work,\u201d Goliath said. \u201cAnd what is core to the work is: Whose lives count? Are they apprehendable as life worth loving, worth grieving after?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the months since the cancelation in January, Goliath has been thinking deeply about what it means that the femicide was considered \u201cacceptable\u201d content, but not the deaths of Palestinians. \u201cThere are so many levels of negation and disavowal taking place when [McKenzie] says, \u2018You can do that,’\u201d she said. What she means, she explained, is that the femicide in South Africa\u2014which President Cyril Ramaphosa declared a \u201cnational crisis\u201d in November\u2014has been rendered something the government considers itself not responsible for, even as it pays \u201clip service\u201d to ending it. The ubiquity of \u201cgendered, racialized, and sexualized violence,\u201d she said, has rendered it \u201cpermissible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yet Palestinian life appears still too politically charged to mourn, even for South Africa, which famously brought a case against Israel in the International Court of Justice for the crime of genocide. Goliath said her cancelation is not unique; the degree of public support she\u2019s received since, however, is.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis degree of cancelation and censorship is happening every day, and quietly,\u201d Goliath said. \u201cI was blessed with an outpouring of support\u2014with the rallying of these incredible organizations. Bertha [Foundation] funds the unfundable, and then courageous spaces like Ibraaz in London and ICA Milano are saying, \u2018We have a home for you.\u2019 That\u2019s no small thing. It\u2019s quite profound at this moment to step up in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAlso among those who stepped up were the Patriarchate of Venice and Don Gianmatteo Caputo, the Delegate for Cultural Heritage and Ecclesiastical Buildings, who met with Goliath and offered up Sant\u2019Antonin after Bj\u00f6rn Geldhof, the director of the PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv, arranged a meeting.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was terrified, I\u2019ll admit. But I said to them: it\u2019s really important that you know what happened\u2014the cancelation, what the work is about\u2014and that you\u2019re happy for us to hold that within your space,\u201d Goliath said. \u201cThey responded with open hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Thursday, Goliath will take\u00a0Elegy<\/em>\u00a0one step further with the launch of the\u00a0Elegy Reader<\/em>, a collection to be published by Ibraaz Publishing comprising poets\u2019 responses to the state of Gaza, the Namibian genocide, and South African femicide, as well as atrocities and conflict in Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Lebanon, and beyond. Goliath will hold a public reading of the poems, for which anyone in Venice can sign up to read, creating a new collective act of mourning that echoes the work.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve spoken to so many people who have been rendered so precarious in this moment. They\u2019ve had funding revoked, they\u2019ve lost their jobs, visas revoked,\u201d she said. \u201cI think it\u2019s going to be a very profound gathering, because it\u2019s about asking others to come, to lend their voice, to lend their presence.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/artists\/gabrielle-goliath-interview-venice-biennale-south-africa-canceled-1234784206\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Elegy_Gabrielle-Goliath-2026-courtesy-of-the-artist_-photo-Luca-Meneghel_4.jpg?w=1024″] The South Africa Pavilion in the Giardini will sit empty for the entirety of this year\u2019s Venice Biennale, the result of a decision by culture minister Gayton McKenzie to cancel a planned pavilion by artist Gabrielle Goliath for being \u201chighly divisive.\u201d But while the building will remain closed, Biennale attendees can see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1921364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1921364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1921364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1921364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1921364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1921364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}