Gabrielle Goliath: Elegy

Developed over more than a decade as a ritual performance and installation project, Gabrielle Goliath’s Elegy (2015–ongoing) brings together collective acts of mourning for lives and histories shaped by violence, erasure and structural loss.

Over the years, the work has evolved across different geographies and communities, with performative encounters staged in Johannesburg, Cape Town, São Paulo, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich and elsewhere.

Elegy now arrives in London for a major institutional presentation. It follows the cancellation of the South African Pavilion at the Venice Biennale and the work’s subsequent presentation as an independent exhibition at the Chiesa di Sant’Antonin, made possible with the support of Ibraaz, the Bertha Foundation and other allies.

Installed in the sonic chamber of Ibraaz’s Minassa, voices and moving images immerse visitors in a space of mourning, kinship and collective care. Addressing rape culture and femicide in South Africa, the genocide of the Ovaherero and Nama peoples in Namibia and the ongoing devastation of Palestinian life, Elegy understands mourning not as closure but as a sustained practice of collective presence.