93 Mortimer Street, London
Until 17 Jan 2027
Developed over more than a decade as an evolving performance and exhibition project, Gabrielle Goliath’s Elegy (2015–ongoing) gathers collective acts of mourning around lives and histories marked by violence, erasure and structural loss. Across presentations in Johannesburg, Cape Town, São Paulo, Paris, Amsterdam, Munich and beyond, Elegy has continued to evolve through different geographies and encounters. The work arrives in London for a major institutional presentation, extending conversations it has already opened, following the cancellation of the South African Pavilion in Venice and its subsequent presentation as an independent exhibition at Chiesa di Sant’Antonin, with the support of Ibraaz, the Bertha Foundation and other allies. Installed across eight funerary monoliths, voices and moving images immerse audiences within a space of mourning, kinship and collective care. Moving between contexts of rape culture and femicide in South Africa, the genocide of Ovaherero and Nama peoples in Namibia and the ongoing devastation of Palestinian life, Elegy proposes mourning not as closure, but as a practice of collective presence.
Not the same tradition as the lineage above — a genuinely different thread to pull, if you want one.