biography
Gabrielle Goliath (b.1983 South Africa). She lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Through the ritual, sonic and social encounters of her art practice, Gabrielle Goliath attends (and tends) to histories and present-day conditions of differentially valued life, reaffirming ways in which black, brown, femme and queer practices of possibility perform the world differently. Each of her works convenes a coming-to – a tenuous community – collapsing the presumed remove and privileged subject position of representation (as white, male, heteronormative) and calling for meetings in and across difference, on terms of complicity, relation and love.
Gabrielle Goliath (b.1983 South Africa). She lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Through the ritual, sonic and social encounters of her art practice, Gabrielle Goliath attends (and tends) to histories and present-day conditions of differentially valued life, reaffirming ways in which black, brown, femme and queer practices of possibility perform the world differently. Each of her works convenes a coming-to – a tenuous community – collapsing the presumed remove and privileged subject position of representation (as white, male, heteronormative) and calling for meetings in and across difference, on terms of complicity, relation and love.
Goliath’s immersive, often durational installations have shown across South Africa and internationally. She has won several awards including a Future Generation Art Prize - Special Prize (2019), the Standard Bank Young Artist Award (2019), and the Institut Français, Afrique en Créations Prize at the Bamako Biennale (2017). Her work features in numerous public and private collections, including Kunsthalle Zürich, TATE Modern, Frac Bretagne, Iziko South African National Gallery, Johannesburg Art Gallery, and Wits Art Museum.
images
These three remain, 2023
installation view, 15th Sharjah Biennal, 2023
12-channel sound & light installation
site specific
Photo: Shanavas Jamaluddin, courtesy of Sharjah Art Foundation
Berenice 10-28, 2010
Installation views, Kunsthaus Baselland, 2022
pigment ink on cotton Baryta
108 x 75cm each, 19 elements
Photo: Gina Folly
Berenice 29-39, 2022
Installation views, Kunsthaus Baselland, 2022
pigment ink on cotton Baryta
90 x 90 cm each, 11 elements
Photo: Gina Folly
public exhibitions
Kunsthaus Baselland
This song is for ...
13.5 – 17.7.2022
The immersive environments of Goliath’s practice draw visitors into a participative space of possibility – of poetry and beauty, despite the difficult thematics explored in her work.
Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present
7.2 – 11.6.2023
Love sounds, and resounds, as listeners enter the light bathed space of These three remain. In the sonic embrace of its twelve speakers, an evolving, body-saturating soundscape animates and entwines over seven thousand samples of the word “love”, drawn from lifeplaylists compiled by the artist and her brothers, Gaston and Jon-Paul. Washed in pastel hues and sequenced in 12-channel surround sound, the installation offers a tenuous, euphoric spacetime otherwise - an entanglement of loves, sounding as the resonant, dissonant, disorderly remains of possibility.
Dallas Contemporary
Chorus
25.9.2022 – 19.3.2023
Acclaimed internationally for her immersive installations that confront urgent social concerns, with chorus at dallas contemporary, multidisciplinary south african artist gabrielle goliath makes her debut in the united states. housed in an immersive, elegiac audio-visual environment in which participants are encouraged to linger, two videos are projected onto large, free-standing blocks which are positioned in relation to each other and occupy darkened space with funeral gravity. the work is an elegy to uyinene mrwetyana, a 19-year-old student from the university of cape town who was brutally raped and murdered in 2019. the murder, which sparked national and international outrage, shone light on the epidemic of violence against women, children and lgbtq people in south africa. goliath’s work remembers and honors these victims of gender-based violence.
press
Artist Gabrielle Goliath’s ‘Chorus’ honors victims of violence at Dallas Contemporary
Dallas Contemporary
February 20, 2023
Review: "Gabrielle Goliath: Chorus" at the Dallas Contemporary | Glasstire
Glasstire
February 18, 2023
Three Sharjah Biennial 15 artists discuss the legacy of Okwui Enwezor
Art Basel
February 2, 2023
