South Africa’s presentation at the Venice Biennale has been thrown into disarray after the government blocked an artwork that references Israel’s war on Palestine.
Gabrielle Goliath was to exhibit a work from her Elegy performance and video series, which focusses on femicide and the murder of gay and trans people in South Africa, as well as the historic murder of women in Namibia by German colonial forces in the 1900s. The work was also to feature the Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, who was killed during an Israeli airstrike in October 2023.
South African culture minister Gayton McKenzie objected, requesting several changes and edits to the work in a letter to the pavilion’s organisers and threatening to rescind funding and support if his demands weren’t met. When Goliath refused, the plug was pulled on the pavilion.
Described by the artist and her curators as ‘an abuse of power and due process, and a contravention of the right to freedom of expression’, McKenzie’s move seems antithetical to South Africa’s wider stance on Gaza. In 2023 the government lodged a case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, seeking to prove claims of genocide and accusing Israel of contravening the Genocide Convention.
Goliath said in a letter sent to McKenzie, seen by the Daily Maverick: ‘We do not believe it is the right or duty of a Minister — especially a Minister for Sport, Arts and Culture — to prescribe or constrain what artists, sports communities and the public can or cannot reflect upon or respond to. Doing so would foreclose the possibility of the arts to facilitate meaningful engagement with urgent and challenging sociopolitical concerns.’
In McKenzie’s reply to Goliath, the minister said: ‘It would not be wise nor defensible for South Africa to support an art installation against a country currently accused of genocide [Israel] while we as South Africa are also fielding unjustified accusations of genocide. The Department of Sport, Arts and Culture cannot support such a highly divisive political narrative on what remains our platform as a country.’
The Biennale required all curatorial concepts to have been submitted on Friday, so it remains to be seen what, if anything, will fill the South African Pavilion come May.
