VOICES IN UNION

Chorus marks Gabrielle Goliath’s US debut at Dallas Contemporary

BY TERRI PROVENCAL

War rages on in Ukraine, with the first trial of a Russian soldier charged with rape in June. In Uvalde, 19 schoolchildren and two teachers were lost in a senseless one-man slaughter over an unimaginable 80-some minutes. An onstage slap, in a room of privilege, was felt the world over and left the global population speechless. Violence is ever the quotidian, but Gabrielle Goliath wants to change that. The multidisciplinary South African artist dedicates her practice to remembrance and hope through immersive installations, haunting and lingering.

Within the outsized Dallas Contemporary, in a modestsized soundproof room, Goliath’s Chorus, an elegiac 23-minute two-channel video and sound installation, remembers the 19-year-old student Uyinene Mrwetyana from the University of Cape Town. It was near campus in 2019 when Mrwetyana was savagely raped, tortured, and murdered inside a post office— an ordinary, utilitarian place, often annoying at times but, one assumes, entirely safe. Underscoring South Africa’s epidemic of violence against women, children, and LGBTIQ people, the fatal act sparked national and international outrage. But is this really so far from home?

Gabrielle Goliath. Courtesy of the artist.

“It’s a global issue,” says Dallas Contemporary curator Emily Edwards. Since 2018, she’s been in conversations with Goliath regarding her “lifework of mourning” confronting social concerns and gender-based violence specifically among black, brown, femme, and queer lives. “With an artist-centered and values-driven approach, Dallas Contemporary aspires to serve as a launchpad for emerging and mid-career artists,” says Edwards.

Edwards is in touch with artists for multiple years prior to exhibition and was moved by Goliath’s earlier work, Elegy, an ongoing performance project, which, the artist says, “took the form of a lament” to sound the alarm of rape culture in her homeland. “The timing felt right to present Chorus,” says Edward, noting that her “curatorial mission aims to work with artists who seek substantive social change and propose solutions through their practice.”

A father’s love of music, a mother’s love of reading, “ordinary family ritualistic practices,” spurred the artist in Goliath. A devastating event, however—the death of Berenice, a childhood friend shot during a “domestic incident” in 1991—carries through her practice today. Following the death, her mother took a young Gabrielle to her friend’s home to grieve. Berenice’s mother beckoned nine-year-old Gabrielle, calling her by her own daughter’s name instead of hers, and in that moment, she understood that any victim of gun violence could bear Berenice’s name. Goliath carried the inexplicable loss with her.

Years later she memorialized her friend’s life unlived through Berenice 10-28 (2010), where nineteen brown women, each representing a single lost year, offer themselves as surrogate presences, stand-ins for Berenice. “Berenice was such an important and pivotal moment for me as an artist,” says Goliath. “I was beginning to think around the ethics of representation. What does it mean to me to speak about these issues in my work?”

Mrwetyana’s death “instigated a moment of national ire,” says Goliath, who was compelled to bring voice to the tragedy. Elegy and Berenice feel familiar in Chorus, where Goliath looked to the University of Cape Town Choir to sustain “a solitary emission of breath,” a collective hum—one note that spreads across their whole vocal range. Mrwetyana’s friends are among these voices standing on a choir rostrum. The other block features a projected vacant choir rostrum, its silence marking the absence of women, children, and LGBTIQ individuals killed in South Africa. First on view at the Goodman Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa, Chorus recalled the names of 463 victims on a commemorative roll within the exhibition space, covering the period of August 2019 to August 2021, which Goliath describes as “the singular experience in relationship to the ongoing roll call of names of these individuals.”

For Dallas Contemporary, Goliath’s installation will include an updated list—as femicide is an ongoing crisis in South Africa. The work encourages mourners to take part in a long, collective, and transformative process. “Chorus embodies the power of art to create a positive ripple effect throughout our Dallas community,” says Edwards, who plans to arm staff with resource material for viewers affected by the work. She also plans to include open conversations with local nonprofit organizations supporting women impacted by domestic violence. “It is about working with the transformative and affective capacities of art, of beauty, to create a space of reverence. These are words I claim. Reverence. Beauty. Ritual,” avows Goliath. P

Gabrielle Goliath, Chorus, 2021, two-channel video and sound installation. Courtesy of Goodman Gallery Cape Town. Photograph by Hayden Phipps.