It has been a turbulent month for art, with clashes between culture and politics splattering outrage all over the globe. At the time of writing, about 300 artists have signed a petition calling for the dismissal of Gayton McKenzie as minister of sports, arts & culture for “reintroducing apartheid-style censorship and curtailment of freedom of speech in contravention of the constitution”.
Here’s the saga in a chronological nutshell:
On December 6, artist Gabrielle Goliath’s performance work Elegy was selected by a committee of five esteemed members of the art community — Greer Valley, Molemo Moiloa, Nomusa Makhubu, Sean O’Toole and Tumelo Mosaka — to represent South Africa at the 61st Venice Biennale, the world’s most distinguished annual cultural festival, in 2026.
Elegy has been evolving since 2015 and has been performed in various iterations around the world. The version planned for Venice commemorates named individuals lost to gender-based violence in South Africa, in the Namibian genocide of the early 1900s, and in Gaza, with a eulogy to slain Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada included in the third section of the performance.
On December 18, the Goodman Gallery ended its long association with Goliath, announcing that the decision to no longer represent her was purely a business one and had nothing to do with the content of her work to be shown in Venice.
On December 22, McKenzie objected to Goliath’s selection because of the inclusion of a tribute to Abu Nada. His letter called it “highly divisive in relation to an ongoing international conflict that is widely polarising”.
On January 2, eight days before plans for South Africa’s pavilion were due to be submitted to the Biennale, McKenzie cancelled Goliath’s participation.
The minister defended his decision in a somewhat murky manner, implying that “foreign powers” were backing Goliath. An article published in the South African Jewish Report on January 15 named Qatar as the interested party and quoted David Saranga of Israel’s foreign ministry as saying: “This case best illustrates how influence operations against Israel are carried out in the cultural space by states with significant resources.”
As it turns out, however, interest by Qatar Museums in purchasing a video recording of Goliath’s Elegy — which has been supported by august art institutions in many countries — had been expressed prior to her Venice selection and was not pursued.
On January 16, Goliath’s representatives sent a letter of demand to McKenzie, insisting “that he immediately desist from any interference with our lawful participation at the Venice Biennale”. This had no effect.
On January 22, Goliath’s legal team filed an application requesting the Pretoria high court to overturn McKenzie’s withdrawal of her work from Venice on the basis that his interference is unconstitutional.
Elegy requires a level of endurance from its audience: to be present, to hold space, to remember
— Saarah Jappie
So what is this art that is causing all the trouble? In a podcast for the University of Cape Town’s Institute for the Creative Arts, Goliath described Elegy as a deeply intimate and personal tribute to specific people, “a ritualistic performance focusing on individuals — black, brown, women or those of nonconforming sexual identity — who have been silenced by fatal acts of sexual violence, who were loved, who are now mourned and grieved for, and who are named”.
A written eulogy, scripted by the friends and family of the person being memorialised, is circulated among the audience prior to each performance, which Goliath called “reverent”.
“Transport yourself into a space, darkly lit, double-volumed, people surrounding a spotlight and a raised dais. Seven operatically trained singers slowly make their way up to the dais and pause for a moment of silence. The first singer steps onto the dais and emits a single tone, sustaining this for as long as they are able to. As they begin to run out of breath, they step slowly off the dais and the next singer steps up and picks up the note where their compatriot’s breath has faltered and failed. As each vocalist peels away from the spotlight they join the participants — I prefer this word to ‘audience’ — who are part of this act of mourning for the person whose name is spotlit on the wall.”
After seeing it in 2022, historian Saarah Jappie of the American Council of Learned Societies wrote: “Elegy requires a level of endurance from its audience: to be present, to hold space, to remember. And mostly, to sit with discomfort: that of the commemorated individual’s story and the violence that ended their life and of bearing witness to this kind of mourning.”
Goliath sees the collective act of mourning as “key to the practice of hope, of being able to imagine a different world”.
As an artist, Goliath speaks for the silenced. Perhaps the noise that has resulted from this attempt to silence her will help the unheard to speak even louder.
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