WORDS Michaela Stehr IMAGE courtesy of Goodman Gallery VIDEO National Arts Festival on YouTube
The 2019 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art has been awarded to Gabrielle Goliath, a South African artist who uses music and art to create social commentary on gender and sexual-based violence.
Born in Kimberly, Gabrielle moved to Johannesburg at age 11. A personal incident involving domestic violence became the catalyst for her commemorative style and social and political comments seen in her work.
“Art is important in that it gives us the means when language fails us, when conventional therapy fails us… Art gives us the means to work through these things in ways that allow for a different kind of encounter,” Gabrielle explains.
Her latest work to be exhibited around South Africa in 2019 navigates “the possibilities and ethical demands of performing and making ‘shareable’ traumatic recall of rape survivors in South Africa.”
This commissioned work will continue to explore Gabrielle’s research into music’s capacity to evoke memory and feeling.
For more information, visit goodman-gallery.com.
