Gabrielle GoliathMango Blossoms (Personal Accounts), 2024
Filmed in Edinburgh (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, channeling 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; and of gender-critical agendas in Scottish social and political hierarchies that actively undermine black, brown, femme, queer and trans wellbeing. Some collaborators reveal their names, show their faces, claim visibility. Others show-up differently, for reasons of self-care, safety and/or a willed opacity. What all of them share in so many ways is something of what survival looks, feels and sounds like, and what it means in spite of all - in the words of one who chooses to withhold her name - “to navigate your life with love, courage and wisdom”.
