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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Personal Accounts - Mango Blossoms

22-channel video & sound installation
2024

Survival is mango blossoms, memory, starry skies, friendships (imperfect), dancing in the rain, going to art school, essential oils (pine scented), finishing a degree, keeping the faith, disbelieving in god, lost in the cosmos, found in journaling, poetry, remembering, (not) forgiving, refusing, rerouting, re-learning to love (or not), choosing transition, transcendence, a house boat commune, channelling Haifa Wehbe. It is more than one thing (victimhood), one angle (scrutiny), one account (continuity = credibility), one timeline (healing).

Gathered in this cycle of eleven accounts is a tenuous community of immigrants, activists, students, survivors– based in, from, or passing through Edinburgh. In dual video accounts they map out experiences of misogyny, racism and rape; of harassment and disregard; of state, church and familial cultures of violence and disavowal that actively undermine black, brown, femme, queer and trans wellbeing.

Some collaborators reveal their names, show their faces, claim visibility. Others appear differently, for reasons of self-care, safety and/or wilful opacity. What is shared between them is something of what survival looks, feels and sounds like, and what it means, in the words of a collaborator who chooses to withhold her name, “to navigate your life with love, courage and wisdom”.

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Special thanks to Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh, and the community of facilitators, translators and survivors who made this work possible (you know who you are).

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