Denying Censorship Allegations, South Africa Cancels Gabrielle Goliath’s Venice Biennale Pavilion
39Jan. 14, 2026
South Africa’s Department of Sport, Arts, and Culture has canceled artistGabrielle Goliath’s pavilion at the upcoming Sixty-FirstVenice Biennale, calling it “highly divisive.” According to South African news platform theDaily Maverick,Arts and Culture Minister Gayton McKenzie ended the project because it contained content relating to the deaths of women and children in Gaza. The move would seem to be in tension with thegovernment’s longstanding support of Palestine, and its 2023 filing against Israel at the International Court of Justice accusing it of violating the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Unanimously chosen by an independent committee on December 6 to represent the country, Goliath had planned to present an updated iteration of herElegyproject, begun in 2015. The performance and video series addresses femicide killings of trans and gay people in South Africa as well as the Herero and Nama massacre conducted by German colonial forces in the 1900s in what is now Namibia. TheMaverickreports that the displayed version was to have honored Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, who died in an Israeli airstrike in October 2023.
The pavilion was being organized by the not-for-profit company Art Periodic at the behest of the Culture Ministry and curated by Ingrid Masondo. Coming on January 2, just eight days before the January 10 deadline for countries to submit their proposals to the Biennale, the cancellation has left the country’s participation in the event in limbo.
In an open letter of January 8, the selection committee that awarded Goliath the pavilion commission decried McKenzie’s decision as “an abuse of executive authority” and “deeply troubling, particularly in light of the Pavilion’s long history of non-transparency and mismanagement.”
McKenzie in a statement issued January 10 claimed that Goliath had promised to sell the pavilion’s artworks to an unnamed foreign country at the Biennale’s conclusion and that it was “being alleged that South Africa’s platform was being used as a proxy by a foreign power to endorse a geopolitical message about the actions of Israel in Gaza.” McKenzie did not name the country and averred that he was not practicing censorship by pulling the pavilion.
Hyperallergic reports that Goliath’s studio confirmed that the artist and Masondo have appealed the decision to South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, and the country’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation.