The Tamesis
South Africa selected a work about Gaza by Gabrielle Goliath for the Venice Biennale, but rescinded the decision amid concerns the work was “polarizing”. Everyday mavericka South African publication.
The Culture Ministry reportedly made the decision to withdraw on January 2, just eight days before countries had to finalize their venues for the Venice Biennale. In an unusual move, the South African Pavilion’s selection committee later issued its own statement expressing its disagreement with the Culture Ministry’s decision.
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South African artist Goliath, who is participating in the main exhibition at the 2024 Venice Biennale, will present a work from her ongoing “Elegy” series, which the artist describes on her website as “an ongoing labor of remembrance, restoration, and black feminist love.” The series began in 2015 as a performance about sexual assault and femicide in South Africa and abroad, and has since expanded to include video installations.
according to Everyday maverickGoliath will discuss Israel’s war in Gaza, a topic she also addressed in a video installation at New York’s MoMA PS1. The new Elegy piece aims to explore the killing of women and queer people during the genocide in South Africa and the killing of Namibian women by German troops in the early 20th century, but one section has reportedly attracted the attention of the Ministry of Culture. This section includes verses from Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, who was killed along with her son in an Israeli airstrike in October 2023.
South Africa’s Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie reportedly sought to amend the section in a letter to the pavilion’s organizers in late December, noting that he had the power to cancel the country’s participation in the biennale. McKenzie claimed that the work was “highly divisive in nature and relevant to ongoing broadly polarizing international conflicts”.
“As an artist, I am concerned with exposing and rejecting the ‘ordinary’ conditions that make violence possible, permissible and terrifying,” Goliath told the New York Times. Everyday maverick. “Whose life can be displaced, raped, killed, denied?”
She added: “I’ve said it many times: my job is not about violence, but instead emphasizes practices of mourning, survival, and repair, although such norms are ignored. At a time when sustaining hope is a political imperative, I think it is even more important to highlight my work Life– work instead die-work and is rooted in decolonial black feminist projects of care and radical love. “
On Thursday, the selection committee called McKenzie’s request a “censorship.” Commission statement, published by South African Arts Publications Art throbssaid the cancellation highlighted larger problems with the organization of the pavilion.
“The elimination of an independent and transparent curatorial process is deeply troubling, especially given the museum’s long history of opacity and mismanagement,” the statement said. “We therefore unreservedly reject any effort to force artists or curators to alter artistic statements to serve political narratives.”
The committee also said that Goliath’s work aptly reflects the theme of the biennale, which is curated by Koyo Kouoh, the director of Cape Town’s Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art who died last year midway through preparations for the exhibition. “The proposed work acknowledges and mourns the tragic loss of innocent lives, including Palestinian women and children,” the committee said. “elegyKouoh’s understated yet powerful engagement with grief exemplifies Kouoh’s emphasis on practices that address historical and ongoing forms of violence with sensitivity, responsibility and emotional depth, undertaking a brave and challenging project on behalf of South Africa.
in a statement Everyday maverickMcKenzie denied that he questioned “the validity or otherwise of the international findings regarding Gaza.” Instead, he attributed his decision to his belief that the South African pavilion “aims to showcase expressions of South African art rooted in the South African experience.” He has denied accusations that he censored Goliath.
Goliath Studio Narrated art news Artist and curator Ingrid Masondo was unanimously elected to lead the pavilion. “We dare to think and dream about the world differently,” they said in an email.
art news South Africa’s Department of Culture has been contacted for comment.
The decision has drawn close attention from artists such as Candice Breitz. Candice Bretz is a South African-born filmmaker who has faced resistance to her work in Germany because of her pro-Palestinian statements on social media. Bretz called Goliath’s decision an “astonishing suppression of free speech” on Instagram.
This is not the first time a 2026 Venice Biennale pavilion has faced controversy over its artists’ beliefs about Israel, Gaza and related issues. Last year, Australia withdrew its selection of Khalid al-Sassabi after conservative publications there questioned the significance of a past work featuring the Hezbollah leader. After an outcry from the international community, Sassabi was eventually reinstated as Australia’s representative.
