Goodman Gallery presents Beloved, a new body of work by Gabrielle Goliath. Beloved. Or as Christina Sharpe phrases it (with characteristic poise), be loved.
In this ongoing and very personal series of drawings and prints, the artist summons and celebrates a chorus of both radical and quotidian femme presences: poets, priestesses, activists, artists, parents and prodigies.
With tender and sensuous lines, in this select showing Goliath pays homage to figures such as Gabeba Baderoon, Caster Semenya, Sylvia Wynter, Yoko Ono, Sade and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Portraits of Alek Wek and Desire Marea are touched with iridescent pigment dust, affirming an erotics of black femme beauty and possibility, whilst the solemn repose of Berenice and Melwyn Britz – mother and father to Camron Britz (d. 2017) – invokes a (life)work of mourning.
Accompanying the drawings are two recent print series, published by Johannesburg-based print studio Edition Verso. Opening new expressive channels, each of these editioned works feature unique hand-coloured elements and line work.
Artworks
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Artist Bio
Through the ritual, sonic and social encounters of her practice, Gabrielle Goliath attends (and tends) to histories and present-day conditions of differentially valued life, reaffirming ways in which black, brown, femme and queer practices perform the world differently. Her work troubles a racial/sexual regime of representation, calling for meetings in and across difference, on terms of complicity, relation and love.
She has received several awards, including the Future Generation Art Prize - Special Prize (2019), Standard Bank Young Artist Award (2019), and Institut Français, Afrique en créations Prize at the Bamako Biennale (2017). Her work is held in collections such as MoMA, Tate Modern, Kunsthalle Zürich, Mudam Luxembourg, Frac Bretagne, and Iziko South African National Gallery. She lives and works in Johannesburg.
