South Africa’s Canceled Venice Biennale Pavilion Project Will Open Independently at a Venetian Church
When the 61st Venice Biennale opens, South Africa’s pavilion in the Arsenale will sit empty. But the project that was meant to occupy it will still meet the public — relocated to Venice’s Chiesa di Sant’Antonin in the Castello neighborhood, a short walk from the Biennale’s main thoroughfares.
South African artist Gabrielle Goliath’s (b. 1983) “Elegy,” described by officials as “highly divisive,” will be presented as an independent exhibition from May 5 through July 31, coinciding with the Biennale’s vernissage week and extending for three months. The work had been selected by Art Periodic, a government-appointed nonprofit, to represent South Africa at this year’s Biennale before it was canceled in January by the country’s culture minister, Gayton McKenzie.
McKenzie’s decision centered on content connected to Israel’s war in Gaza. For its Venice debut, Goliath updated “Elegy” to commemorate Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in October 2023 — an addition the minister cited in labeling the project “divisive.” McKenzie has publicly expressed support for Israel, a position that departs from South Africa’s official stance, which supports Palestine.
The cancellation triggered sharp criticism from South Africa’s arts community and drew attention from international NGOs, intensifying a debate that has become increasingly familiar across global cultural institutions: who gets to define the boundaries of political speech in publicly supported art.
Goliath and curator Ingrid Masondo attempted to reinstate the pavilion presentation through South Africa’s high court, but the effort failed last month. In response, the team moved to realize the project outside the national pavilion framework. In a statement, Goliath framed the decision as an insistence on continuing to imagine “the world differently” despite “cancelation, threat, and incommensurable losses.”
First developed in 2015 and continuously reworked since, “Elegy” is an ongoing performance project that functions as a memorial structure — a work that returns, iteration by iteration, to the problem of how grief is held in public. It commemorates victims of unjust killings, including women and queer people in South Africa, and extends to historical atrocities such as the Herero and Nama genocide of the early 1900s.
In Venice, “Elegy” will take the form of a video installation presented across eight screen “monoliths,” a format that emphasizes repetition and duration — the sense of mourning as something lived, not concluded.
The independent presentation has been supported by South Africa’s Bertha Foundation and Ibraaz, a recently established London-based charity focused on art from the Global Majority. After its Venice run, “Elegy” is scheduled to be shown at Ibraaz in October, timed to coincide with Frieze London. Lina Lazaar, Ibraaz’s founder and director, described the work as one that “holds memory, care and connection in the face of loss,” adding that bringing it forward now feels “urgent and necessary.”
With national pavilions often treated as cultural calling cards, the sight of an empty Arsenale space alongside an off-site presentation underscores a larger reality of this Biennale season: the most consequential arguments may be happening not only inside the official venues, but also in the decisions about what is allowed to appear there at all.
