After the South African government axed Gabrielle Goliath’s pavilion for the 2026 Venice Biennale—where she was to present Elegy (2015– ), her ongoing project addressing histories of femicide and, in its latest iteration, commemorating the Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada who killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza—the artist will nevertheless bring the work to Venice this May.

Supported by the Bertha Foundation and the London-based charity Ibraaz, Elegy will be showcased from May 5 to July 31 at the Chiesa di Sant’Antonin in the Castello district—just a short walk from the now-empty South African pavilion in the Arsenale—maintaining proximity to the Biennale even as it unfolds outside its official program.

Elegy was originally commissioned for the national pavilion before South Africa’s minister of sport, arts, and culture Gayton McKenzie withdrew the country from the Biennale. Labeling the project as “highly divisive in nature” and relating to “an ongoing international conflict that is widely polarizing,” McKenzie demanded alterations to the work and ultimately canceled the pavilion on January 2. Goliath and curator Ingrid Masondo filed a legal application on January 22 to challenge the move, but the South African High Court dismissed the case.

Initiated in 2015, Elegy is an ongoing commemorative project in which ensembles of mostly female and gender-diverse singers sustain a continuous, physically demanding vocalization mourning women and individuals from the LGBTQ+ community who have been killed through gendered and sexualized violence. Across its multichannel video and sound installations, the work layers recordings from various renditions so that different performances sound together, framing grief as a collective, durational, open-ended practice.

In Venice this May, Elegy will be installed across eight vertical video “monoliths” within the church of Sant’Antonin, immersing visitors in a field of filmed bodies and voices. This independent staging ensures Goliath’s visibility in the city, countering South Africa’s state-sanctioned attempt to silence her voice within global discourse.

Michele Chan is managing editor at ArtAsiaPacific.