This Song Is For… By Gabrielle Goliath, At Standard Bank Art Gallery!

Gabrielle Goliath’s haunting installation This Song Is For… gives song to the lived experiences of rape survivors

Exhibition: This Song Is For…
Artist: Gabrielle Goliath, Standard Bank Young Artist, 2019
Dates: 26 July – 14 September 2019

South African multimedia artist, gender advocate and now 2019’s Standard Bank Young Artist
award winner for visual art, Gabrielle Goliath (b.1983), brings her new work, This song is for…
to Johannesburg this month. Following its successful run at the National Arts Festival in
Makhanda, the work moves to the Standard Bank Art Gallery, where it will be presented as an
immersive audio and visual installation.

On entering the exhibition space, audiences are confronted by a unique collection of dedication
songs – playing sequentially, and each one chosen by a survivor of rape. These are songs of
personal significance to the survivors – songs that take them back to a particular time and
place, evoking a sensory world of memory and feeling. As collaborators on the project, the
survivors shared not only their songs, but also a colour of their choosing and a written reflection.
The artist then worked in close collaboration with a group of women and gender-queer led
musical ensembles to reinterpret and re-perform the songs.

Leading local musicians like Nonku Phiri, Desire Marea, Msaki, Gabi Motuba, Dope Saint Jude,
BŪJIN and Jacobi de Villiers are featured – presenting new renditions of such well-known songs
as Bohemian Rhapsody, Ave Maria and Save the Hero, to name a few.
During the course of each song, a sonic disruption is introduced; a recurring musical rupture
recalling the ‘broken record’ effect of a scratched vinyl LP. Presented in this performed
disruption is an opportunity for listeners to imaginatively inhabit a contested space of traumatic
recall – one in which the de-subjectifying violence of rape and its psychic afterlives become
painfully entangled with personal and political claims to life, dignity, hope, faith, even joy.
Speaking to the work, Goliath reflects, “In a work like This song is for… I am seeking to resist
the violence through which black, brown, feminine, queer and vulnerable bodies are routinely
objectified, in the ways they are imaged, written about, spoken about…what I have in mind is a
more empathic interaction.”


Gabrielle Goliath situates her practice within contexts marked by the traces, disparities and as-
of-yet unreconciled traumas of colonialism and apartheid, as well as socially entrenched
structures of patriarchal power and rape-culture.
This Song is for…opens at the Standard Bank Gallery on the 26 th of July, and will include a
programme of live performances.
“When language fails us, when conventional therapy fails us, art allows for a different kind
of encounter, a more human encounter perhaps. One in which the differences that mark
our experiences of the world become the grounds for our mutual acknowledgement and
care,” concludes Goliath.


STANDARD BANK GALLERY
The Standard Bank Gallery – located on the corner of Simmonds and Frederick streets in
central Johannesburg – offers free, safe undercover parking on the corner of Harrison and
Frederick streets. Gallery hours: Mondays to Fridays from 8am to 4.30pm, and Saturdays from
9am to 1pm. Entrance to the exhibition is free.
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ABOUT STANDARD BANK ARTS
The arts in Africa are a powerful expression of our creativity and play an integral part in
generating a positive narrative with a global impact. It is upon this narrative that Standard Bank
has established its mandate - supporting a wide range of initiatives to both nurture young talent
and showcase the rich diversity of our creative arts. Standard Bank’s commitment to investing
across the arts spectrum on the continent represents a 31-year legacy and the company is
proud to provide ongoing support for a variety of key projects, which have evolved into
highlights across the South African and African cultural calendar.