Goodman Gallery
16.11 - 10.12.2021

To enter the space where Chorus is installed is to step into a hushed room where varying interpretations of ‘presence’ can be found. A culmination of thoughtful spacing, dimmed lighting, darkened walls, footage of a student choir and, as they share breath, their chorus; along with a significant list of names – all coalesce into an intimacy which is urgent, a knowing which reverberates in tune with their mourning. 

Gabrielle Goliath, Chorus, 2021. Courtesy of Goodman Gallery.

MMK: Video installations often remind me to take care, and to take time. What about the medium’s relation to time do you think illuminates aspects of the subject matter to the audience?

Gabrielle Goliath: When one thinks of the temporal, particularly in relation to what conceptually, poetically, affectively drives many of my works – which are often of long duration and quite demanding on those who come to them – it is an attempt to orientate people to a kind of subterranean foundation of social life as we know it. Whose life counts as life? Whose life is recognised as intelligible life? If that is the question or provocation we start with, then it is absolutely a thinking about (or with) time, socially catastrophic time. These legacies of imperialism, of slavery, of apartheid continue to shape and form and organise life in the present, and time as we know it. That’s why I don’t use those words lightly: political, poetic, affective, as driving aspects of the work. Because it is key that we take time. 

MMK: I agree.

GG: This touches on something that really is a distinct trait of my work. I start at that point of, “What would constitute intelligible life, sentient life?” Which is also then to address the question of representation. If there is this capacity to enact a symbolic violence within the realm of representation, how does one proceed in a way that accounts for this contingency? Because I believe that any form of artmaking carries with it a capacity to wound. Rather than re-perpetuate the  trauma I broach in my work, I seek to enable a different, hopefully more human and relational aesthetic encounter. 

That’s why I so often insist upon the fact that my work is not about violence. You will not walk into an exhibition of mine and encounter the depiction of [it, as spectacle. In actual fact, it really is about life – particularly for me in a work such as Chorus. It is about a future that is premised on the recall and commemoration of those who have passed, as a way of actively accounting for the conditions of raced and gendered violence that are our norm.

Gabrielle Goliath, This song is for … Vol I, 2021. Courtesy of Goodman Gallery.

MMK: With the installations, how would you describe the space that you are cultivating, or hoping to cultivate?

GG: The spatial, sensorial, immersive aspects of the work are so key. A word that always came to mind for, let’s say This song is for…  but Chorus as well, is that of reverence. I remember having this discussion with somebody else, thinking about what we might mean when we speak of ‘the beautiful.’ I’ve often thought that, in a work such as This song is for… it is so important to create, through colour, curatorial strategy, light and sound, that sense of immersion, to put in place the terms and conditions that must be in place in order to engage with the work. For me, that demands a necessary measure of reverence. 

When speaking of life that is rendered so precarious, so disposable, how do we shift those terms of engagement? For me, it is about a reinscription of Black, femme life, which demands a certain sense of coming to the work. Space, and how I treat space – these very deliberate methods of light, colour, placement and positioning – are so key in creating that kind of experience. You draw my attention to Chorus. It is not incidental that it is not a projection on a wall. It is a two-channel video projection onto two monolithic structures that sit in space. That in itself registers quite differently to how it might have, had it just been projected straight onto a wall. I would also argue that it engenders what I seek to shift, as these terms of engagement. It is about coming to the work mindful of what you are about to open yourself up to.

MMK: In realising the project, what was fundamental, or non-negotiable for you?

GG: Ultimately, what is fundamental to all of my works, my praxis, is a commitment to what I have always termed an ethics of representation. It’s thinking carefully about the history of representation, how certain bodies have been subjected to symbolic forms of violence. In order to counter that to some degree within my own work, it’s about ensuring that the work is subject-centred. Subject led. Self-reflexive, self-aware, and relational. Entangled within a world of others. 

I often jokingly, but actually quite seriously, speak of the ‘Alfredo Jaar Complex.’ Where one can approach a societal ill at large, tick it off and say, “Okay, I’ve dealt with that crisis.” If anything, I say – and this is fundamental to the way in which I work – it is messy, and it is implicated, and I am a part of it. I say, I’m in a world with others. It’s about accounting for violence in all of its manifestations, as structural, endemic, always involving. It’s not about approaching it as anonymous, faceless, or spectacular, which is often quite alienating. It’s about approaching human experiences of trauma and survival, as situated, embodied, specific, singular, named, faced, and lived. 

I would say a non-negotiable for me is to be ever mindful of the capacity of art to wound, to perform a certain measure of violence. No matter what I do, and no matter how hard I strive to not perpetuate violence in my work, there is always that risk. But, I work to not do that, to not enact that through the work. 

Gabrielle Goliath, Chorus, 2021. Courtesy of Goodman Gallery.

MMK: As a creative, and as a person, there is a toll that you pay in making, in giving, in sharing. I want to know, what was that like in this instance?

GG: I think this is actually deeply entangled with what I’ve just spoken about. It’s the self – the notion of self, of self-care – as contingent on others. Caring for another. This work is about a kind of relational politics that says to each and every one of us: I might not understand your pain, I might not be able to access it, I nonetheless am compelled to respond to it. I see it. I acknowledge it, and I empathetically, across difference – not collapsing the difference – come to your experience. That’s what drives the work. And, I really mean this, I don’t say it glibly: my work is life-giving, life-affirming, predicated on the hope and possibility of social life shifting as we know it by way of always holding those whom we have lost. 

MMK: Regarding the students at UCT, the choir, what else came out of this creative exchange?

GG: This is the institution where Uyinene was resident as a student. That proximity has consequence. So, when watching the performance, you will see that there are some singers who are crying and not singing. These were acquaintances of Uyinene’s. I think that kind of transference of emotion, experience, and relation is just extraordinary. I think that’s what comes through in the piece, this sounding out of a lament for Uyinene. I often say it’s really important for my work to travel, to be experienced transnationally, because this nature of violence is not consigned to the abject South, it is foundational to social life. Nonetheless, it is incredibly extraordinary that they are the ones who enacted this lament on behalf of Uyinene. Not only Uyinene. I think this is what happens when one is immersed within that experience: one simultaneously feels and hears and sees their collective lament in relation to the absent rostra. The significance of the absent rostra from the other channel is to consider how, since the devastating passing of Uyinene, over four hundred femme, queer, trans and non-gender conforming individuals have been subject to fatal acts of racialised and sexualised violence in South Africa. 

That is what is brought about through the magisterial presence of this choir. It was quite a special encounter. This work came about just (well, at least, the filming of it) before we descended into hard lockdown in South Africa. So it was the last pre-pandemic encounter for me with a rather large group of people. Whilst everyone was slightly on edge at first, because we were just hearing the first murmurings of this contagion, travelling globally, by the end of it, everybody was embracing one another. Everybody began to share food. In itself, that was quite a beautiful foundation for this work. Founded in all of us coming together, collectively making this work, performing the work of mourning.

Gabrielle Goliath, Chorus, 2021. Courtesy of Goodman Gallery.

MMK: The process of accumulating all of the information with various foundations and organisations, what was that like? 

GG: If this is a world within which I am implicated, and not just a passive bystander, then it is about becoming relationally involved in one way or another. In the case of Elegy, that was achieved through making contact with a family member or friend of the person who would be commemorated in the performance, and asking them to script a eulogistic text. This was always made available at the performance for those who came to it, who came to read it, which was a key aspect of the work. 

In the instance of Chorus, it was always important to me that I make contact, which I did, through the Uyinene Mrwetyana Foundation, and inform them of the work: what it would be, where it would be taking place, and what it was about. In the wake of Uyinene’s passing, there was an overwhelming artistic response that the family were not always entirely happy with, and quite troubled by. This was something I was quite cognisant of. So, this work does, quite importantly, come with the blessing of the foundation.