The Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape adds its voice to many others who are deeply concerned about the cancellation of Gabrielle Goliath’s Elegy that was officially selected for the South African Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 2026.
Elegy engages deeply and poetically with histories of gender-based violence against women, children and marginalised subjects. It goes back as far as the Nama and Herero genocides in Namibia up to recent killings in Gaza, as well as the chronic and horrific levels of ongoing daily violence in South Africa. Acts of repair in the wake of violence take sustained work across multiple generations. Goliath’s Elegy is widely acknowledged as opening an important space of mourning and participation that refuses spectacle and allows for shared grief and participation to begin. It is against violence.
The last-minute cancellation of Goliath’s selected work by the Minister for Sports, Art and Culture is an arbitrary act that, whatever its motivations, places the freedom of artistic expression in jeopardy. The decision is itself a form of patriarchal violence against artists and curators working in the wake of its very harm. The CHR calls on the President’s Office to rescind this highly controversial decision that has placed South Africa in a very negative, even philistine, light in terms of the international attention around the Biennale. The CHR calls for the work of repair by Elegy to continue by the artist Gabrielle Goliath and project curator, Ingrid Masondo.