Gabrielle Goliath

“I appreciate your note on the centrality of bodily presence and situated knowledge, which is key to the political, poetic, affective and conceptual impetus of the work, as it calls us into a different, more relational aesthetic encounter. It is, however, important to recall that not all “bodies” are equal, or equally “believable”, and do not enter into political representation on commensurate terms. An (anti-black/brown/poor/femme) index of differentially valued life continues to sustain an inequitable regime of representation, one in which white heteronormativity reads (and reads well) whilst the “affectable others” (to cite Denise Ferreira da Silva) do not.”

Art Frame Interview read

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To grieve Atlantide is to
(re)imagine Atlantide.
Here.
Now.

A note of solidarity and care from Gabrielle Goliath, on the occasion of her exhibition of Elegy in Bologna (2025). Italian version

Elegy is an ongoing work of black feminist mourning and repair, commemorating women and LGBTQIA+ individuals lost to an everyday order of racial-sexual violence, in South Africa and globally. Over the years, performances have been staged across the world: in churches, public spaces, galleries and art museums. As an installation it has also travelled widely, and is now sounding in Bologna, within the walls of what the local queer community still call Atlantide. I count each opportunity to present the work as an honour, but also an honouring: of Lerato, Joan, Hannah, Camron, Kagiso, Noluvo, Sizakele, Salome, and all those recalled in the collective, sonic labour of this lament.

This particular exhibition, however, calls for an additional (but not separate) work of recognition. Another feminist and queer honouring. I am deeply grateful to a community of trans-feminist and queer activists in the city, who have with generosity and grace walked me through a history of queer displacement and erasure, connected to the space in which you now stand, and in which Elegy sounds. From 1999, Atlantide was a site of queer and punk underground culture – a space of refuge, joy, creativity and learning, occupied and self-organised by three collectives: Nulla Osta, Clitoristrix and Laboratorio Smaschieramenti. Then, in 2015 (the year I staged the very first performance of Elegy), the police carried out a violent eviction, shutting down the space at the request of the city’s administration. An international statement of solidarity signed by leading feminist and queer voices such as Judith Butler and Susan Stryker drew attention to the situation, but Atlantide was bricked up. Needless to say, the erasure and delegitimisation (queer life = criminality) marked by this action profoundly injured the LGBTQIA+ community in Bologna, who ten years on are still struggling to find hospitable, non-commercial spaces for queer socialisation and political organising.

And so, the work of mourning called for in Elegy must extend to these losses also, as we collectively refuse conditions of disregard and hierarchised life, and work to assert the loveability and grievability of black, brown, femme, queer and trans lives. This is mourning as a political labour of invocation, as we actively recall what and whom we have lost to the systematic disregard of white heteropatriarchy, and with courage, care, community and wilfulness, seek to perform the world differently. This is mourning as life-work, in which to grieve for Atlantide is to refuse its erasure, and to imagine it anew. Here. Now.

In allyship and love,

Gabrielle

To grieve Atlantide is to (re)imagine Atlantide. Here. Now.

To grieve Atlantide is to
(re)imagine Atlantide.
Here.
Now.