Gabrielle Goliath: when a work becomes a political case

Gabriella Goliath «Elegy ongoing performance project» 2015. Courtesy: Galleria Raffella Cortese, Studio Goliath

Your work has been described as 'divisive'. How do you experience this label and what do you think it says about the historical moment we are living in?

It is not a description I accept. It is worth noting that the Minister for Sport, Arts and Culture, Gayton McKenzie, who attributed it to 'Elegy', has never seen my work. This facile assumption - whereby a work of ritual mourning is dismissed - speaks volumes about the poverty of a politics devoid of accountability and regard for ignored lives, in which the topoi of 'social cohesion' and 'nation-building' end up co-existing and normalising xenophobia, rape culture, feminicide and even genocide.

What role does art play for you when confronted with ongoing, painfully unresolved events?

In a context of irreparable damage and immeasurable loss, in the open wound of the world, art is for me a practice of survival, an affirmation of possibility despite everything. I do not believe that art has a role as such, nor do I share overly positivist views of its 'social functions'.
In a context of white hetero-normative welfare-oriented representation, as a past-present-future project of history, I believe art can perforate, navigate fleetingly, depart and imagine. It is not about inaugurating new social orders or future utopias, but about everyday work that rejects normative violence and dares to think, dream, imagine and represent life, community and the world differently, here and now. If Louise Bourgeois considered art a guarantee of sanity, I see hope not as a guarantee, but as a tender, fragile and potentially transformative offer of possibility.

Beyond your specific case, do you think this situation could set a precedent for other artists working on politically sensitive issues?

Yes. Ingrid Masondo, curator of the exhibition, and I are fully aware of the wider implications of this erasure for the art community in South Africa and around the world. Freedom of expression is guaranteed by our Constitution, after the abuses, censorship and propaganda of apartheid. If the rights to creative freedom - to criticism and dissent - are eroded in this case, through manipulation of power and pressure from groups and financiers, a deeply worrying precedent will be set, which will threaten all artists, curators and creatives in the country. We are not alone in this thinking: numerous public campaigns and letters have called for the intervention of President Cyril Ramaphosa, whose failure to respond has been a disappointment to many.

Last year you participated in the main exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Looking at the two experiences - last year's and this year's - where do you see the boundaries of international artistic legitimacy?

As artists - and, in particular, as artists of colour - I do not believe we should seek legitimacy in art world structures or high-profile platforms like the Biennale. It is up to us to navigate these structures of 'opportunity' with thoughtful care and responsibility. My work was treated with genuine curatorial care in the previous Biennale, by Adriano Pedrosa and Amanda Carneiro, and presenting "Personal Accounts" at the Giardini was an opportunity to do something tender and beautiful.
Having said that, I was also faced with a very complex funding situation, from which I eventually withdrew. These are the contingencies and demands we have to face. We cannot walk a perfect line, but we can (and I think we should) look for paths and ways out of 'lesser violence', in the hope of fostering encounters of possibility within a difficult and burdened art economy.
In my current situation, a boundary of legitimacy has certainly revealed itself, in the controlled conditions of participation, acceptance and success. In crossing this line, in transgressing legitimacy, I find support in the many others who have done the same with courage, care and imagination.

Do you think that today's leading art institutions are really ready to support works that take a stance on current geopolitical conflicts?

Of course it depends on the conflict. I recently exhibited at the PinchukArtCentre, which has a very clear position on the war in Ukraine. Many institutions would take a similar stance on the Russian invasion. On other conflicts, however, the situation changes: geopolitics, vested interests and levels of complicity come into play.
The real question for any art institution is: what am I not prepared to deal with and why? In this complex context, what interests me is the readiness of individuals - particularly blacks, women, queers and decolonial allies - to promote change, cultivate possibilities and push the limits of what is possible in the face of social catastrophe.

Your work is supported and recognised in Italia by Raffaella Cortese. In South Africa, the gallery that represented you broke off the relationship: how did you experience this change and what do you think it means for the current cultural climate in the country?

Galleria Raffaella Cortese is my artistic family in Italia. They have shown me what it means to really believe in the work of an artist: a deeply relational path, based on solidarity and care, which they have consistently demonstrated. Being dropped by the Goodman Gallery at the very moment when I had been assigned the South African National Pavilion was shocking. Shortly afterwards, the Pavilion was cancelled. It was a difficult and worrying time, which made me realise how valuable real support is, such as that of the Raffaella Cortese Gallery, which was among the first to make a public statement of solidarity when the Pavilion was threatened. Alongside them, the community of artists, curators and creative people in South Africa and around the world supported me during this difficult time, with messages of closeness and symbolic gestures, such as leaving flowers on my doorstep. These cancellations reveal rifts not only in the South African art context, but also globally. I am not the only artist to suffer such abandonments or cancellations for controversial content: it is a worrying trend, which we must reject if we want to imagine a different world.

Your work often deals with themes such as violence, mourning and collective memory. Where does this sense of urgency come from and how has it evolved over time?

I often refer to my practice as my life's work. It is lived, inhabited, embodied, but above all it affirms life and possibility, within and despite what I call the impossibility of the representation of women of colour. By this I mean the everyday, often invisible conditions that make their lives subject to violence, contempt and death. Aesthetics - and all that it implies - is not separate from these structures of contempt, but is deeply rooted in them. I do not consider my work 'thematic' in the sense of a documentary or a scene of witnessing a social evil. Rather, it is a relational and interwoven practice: living, breathing and working within and against an order of racial and sexual violence. It is urgent because, for these lives - our lives - it is a matter of survival. My work exceeds me in many ways. It asks a lot of me, often more than I think I can give. But this demand has driven me, not towards a career in art according to the cliché of the 'brilliant white male artist', but into the complicated intertwining of work and life: into relationships, into community, into encounters across differences. And that impulse grew over time, fuelling the urgency to do this life's work, fragile, restorative, loving and (im)possible.