Public mourning turns performance art

Gabrielle Goliath honours the victims of gendered and sexualised violence by helping her audience to mourn them, writes Tsepang Molefe

In a packed gallery in Bree Street, Cape Town, there are seven women dressed in black. They queue before a small wooden stage.

A spotlight forms a perfect circle around the stage and the crowd maintains utter silence.

The first woman steps up and starts vocalising notes from deep in her belly.

The audience waits for the notes to connect, the melody to take shape, but the anticipated song never comes.

The seven women take turns vocalising in different tonalities, gingerly stepping up, down, then to the back of the line.

As the notes begin to take on some sort of form, albeit unstructured , anticipation gives way to gloom and the audience meditates to the energy of an unsung dirge.

Objects that I associate with mourning - two candles, a mattress, a blanket - are visible in my saddened imagination.    

story_article_left1

In the facial expressions of the women one senses immeasurable brokenness, a violated spirit, the darkness of a mourning life.

A painful lump rises in my throat. A sob escapes from the stranger standing next to me.

Elegy is the work of multidisciplinary artist Gabrielle Goliath and focuses on gendered and sexualised violence.

It has a simple concept: female vocal performers performing a sung cry, bringing to life the dark monochrome images of mourning.

A commemorative gesture, Elegy also enacts ritual - deep, public mourning.

It is an ongoing performance project. Future iterations of Elegy will be staged in various locations and contexts, with each realised in memory of a specific individual.

It started off at the Goodman Gallery in 2015, with a tribute to Ipeleng Christine Moholane, a 19-year-old student who was found murdered, assaulted, lying in open veld in Tembisa. (Watch the performance.)

"I do feel that art has the capacity to address social ills in that it can make possible meaningful and affecting aesthetic encounters, whereby people are able to think and feel in different ways about a range of social and political issues," Goliath said after the performance, which was part of the Institute for Creative Art Live Arts Festival.

"For me, it is about touching people, and drawing them in to an ethically demanding relation to situations of violence. For example, in seeking to address the embedded and normative violence of rape culture in South Africa, Elegy encourages forms of individual as well as collective mourning."  

full_story_image_hleft1

In a world where the victim is often without an identity - nameless, another variable in the equation of statistics - Goliath emphasises "the specificity of their story".

Tonight's work is Elegy/Noluvo Swelindawo "Vovo", Youngblood, Cape Town, 2017. Swelindawo, a gender activist, was brutally killed after being abducted from her home in Khayelitsha by 10 men, in what was said to have been a hate crime.

Goliath has previously presented Elegy/Sinoxolo Mafevuka, Langa Methodist Church, Cape Town, 2016 and Elegy/Koketso "Queen", Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, 2016.

How does one address the violent nature of this world without presenting the act?

"Much of my practice situates itself within the sociopolitical landscape of South Africa, with a particular focus on violence as perpetrated against women, as well as trans and non-binary individuals," says Goliath.

"Given the sensitive nature of the underlying thematics of my work, I grapple constantly with the problem of representing violence. Put simply, how does one go about representing violence (be it physical or structural) and the trauma of its aftermath in ways ethical and respectful to the pain and suffering of others, and so as to counter the spectacle of violence?"

Goliath doesn't just relocate pain and exhibit it in galleries.

She is conscious of the fact that how we deal with loss is delicate and fragile by nature. The subject matter is capable of evoking feelings of pain and suffering, and maybe thoughts of the victims' final earthly moments.

"With each performance, I do try and make contact with either a family member, partner, or friend of the deceased. Given the traumatic circumstances under which the commemorated individuals have died, it is, however, not always possible to make direct contact.

"That being said, I have had the privilege of corresponding with Ipeleng's father, Isaac Sello Moholane, Koketso's friend (who prefers to remain anonymous), and Noluvo's partner, Nqabisa Mkatali.

"These individuals have shared with me something of the character and person of the loved one they have lost. These details I in turn share as a means of working against what is often seen as nameless and faceless violence."

The performance has the power to engage on a level of the psyche so deep it erases the line between art and realism.

Mourning is never a pleasurable experience. Elegy is able to construct a degree of displeasure, which somehow serves as a catalyst for the audience to spiritually engage with it.

Delivered in classical timbre, the performance is soul-piercing.

It strains the heartstrings, and somehow allows the audience to genuinely mourn.

"The women who perform the piece are all classically trained opera singers. With every Elegy performance, I have the privilege of working with wonderful, talented and empathic collaborators.

"It is important to me that they feel a strong connection with the objective of the performance, which is essentially one of commemoration, and facilitating a work of public mourning.

"The performance is incredibly demanding on the singers, on a physical as well as emotional level. Their contribution is fundamental to the realisation of the work, and means a great deal to me," said Goliath.

story_article_right2

Goliath's work is represented in the collections of the Iziko South African National Gallery and the Johannesburg Art Gallery, as well as in academic, private and corporate collections. It has featured in exhibitions in New York, North Carolina and Berlin. She is currently a PhD candidate at the Institute for Creative Arts, Cape Town. A video work will travel to Milan next.

"I'm always excited about the possibilities of presenting Elegy in contexts that seem far removed from here. I have been deeply moved and encouraged in the past by the way in which people from radically different sociopolitical contexts are able to relate empathically to seemingly far-flung situations of violence and loss," said Goliath.

How spiritually close can we place ourselves to the dead? Feel their existence in another somewhere? Collectively share their pain and ours? And engage with them through a channel that does not rely on some memory transmission?

Goliath's Elegy does not attempt to provide answers. Rather, it emotionally places the audience in a ritual, and in so doing is able to drive its core subject. Elegy heals the living. It counters grief. It is an outlet to cough out the pain.

Elegy also becomes an expression of respect for a lost life. It restores dignity and worth to a violated life.

• Visit gabriellegoliath.com to watch Elegy Ipeleng Christine Moholane.