GABRIELLE GOLIATH

Initiated in 2010, Berenice is an ongoing work of memorialisation, recalling Berenice, a close childhood friend of the artist’s, who on Christmas Eve 1991 was shot and killed in a ‘domestic incident’. The images themselves are starkly beautiful: at once haunting and provocative in their address. For each portrait in the series, a woman or LGBTIQ+ individual of colour offers themself as a surrogate presence, ‘standing in’ for Berenice as each of them marks another year of her life unlived. In this way, a growing community of artists, writers, musicians, activists, mothers and friends join Goliath in what she calls “a life-work of mourning”. Rooted in a black feminist politics of care, Berenice reaffirms black girlhood as both loveable and grievable.

Gabrielle Goliath writes:

“At a time in which black, brown, feminine, queer and trans wellbeing feels increasingly imperiled, the poetic and political significance of this work can hardly be overstated. For we cannot imagine and seek to realise a world otherwise, if we fail to bear with us those lost to or still surviving an order of violence, we hope to – and must – transform.”

Following installations in Venice, Tunis, Edinburgh, and most recently Kyiv, the solo showing of Personal Accounts at Museum of Modern Art PS1 marks the US premiere of the artist’s acclaimed, ongoing video and sound cycle, Personal Accounts (2024–). Additionally, her immersive, audiovisual installation, Elegy for Two Ancestors, is currently sounding at the MOMENTA Biennale d’art contemporain in Montreal (until 1 November 2025). First performed at the 2024 Venice Biennale, this sonic lament tends to the losses and contemporary implications of the Ovaherero and Nama Genocide in Namibia (1904-1908).