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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Gabrielle Goliath, Beloved (Nomonde), 2024, oil stick & chalk pastel on paper, 200 x 140cm

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Nomonde Calata, social activist and survivor, advocating for Ubuntu as a practice of collective healing and regard.

Mrs Calata’s husband was one of the “Cradock Four” - Fort Calata Matthew Goniwe, Sicelo Mhlawli and Sparrow Mkhonto - who were tortured and murdered in 1985 by apartheid security forces.

The case of the “Cradock Four” was the first hearing of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Council (TRC) in 1996. Journalist and poet Antjie Kroeg recalls how, “The starting point of the human rights hearing was the indefinable wail that burst from Nomonde Calata's lips”.

A third inquest into the deaths of Fort Calata Matthew Goniwe, Sicelo Mhlawli and Sparrow Mkhonto was scheduled for September 2024 but was deferred to June 2025 - a blow to Mrs Calata and other family members seeking closure and justice after 39 years.

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