Gabrielle Goliath

“Goliath’s practice is grounded in that recovery, with works that test how art can create space for trauma to unfold and unfurl – to be worked through relationally, laterally, personally – in the name of restoration through recognition. That is, to hold space for witnessing as much as to bear witness; not through language nor the intellectualisation of the horrors of systemic violence, but through the complex web of emotions and states that define its ever-shifting and far-reaching textures, both within the body and without.”

Stephanie Bailey,
Art Review read

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Personal Accounts - Mango Blossoms

22-channel video & sound installation
2024

Survival is mango blossoms, memory, starry skies, friendships (imperfect), dancing in the rain, going to art school, essential oils (pine scented), finishing a degree, keeping the faith, disbelieving in god, lost in the cosmos, found in journaling, poetry, remembering, (not) forgiving, refusing, rerouting, re-learning to love (or not), choosing transition, transcendence, a house boat commune, channelling Haifa Wehbe. It is more than one thing (victimhood), one angle (scrutiny), one account (continuity = credibility), one timeline (healing).

Gathered in this cycle of eleven accounts is a tenuous community of immigrants, activists, students, survivors– based in, from, or passing through Edinburgh. In dual video accounts they map out experiences of misogyny, racism and rape; of harassment and disregard; of state, church and familial cultures of violence and disavowal that actively undermine black, brown, femme, queer and trans wellbeing.

Some collaborators reveal their names, show their faces, claim visibility. Others appear differently, for reasons of self-care, safety and/or wilful opacity. What is shared between them is something of what survival looks, feels and sounds like, and what it means, in the words of a collaborator who chooses to withhold her name, “to navigate your life with love, courage and wisdom”.

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Special thanks to Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh, and the community of facilitators, translators and survivors who made this work possible (you know who you are).

installation views
preview (request access)

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Survivor Offerings

In addition to what is presented (and withheld) in the installation itself, collaborators in Personal Accounts sometimes choose to share supplementary offerings which are made available online. These may be narrations of their experience or practices of survival and wellbeing, such as prayers, poems, playlists, recipes or artworks.

A trans woman who chooses to withhold her name
A woman who chooses to withhold her name
A woman who chooses to withhold her name
Bethan
Catriona
Emma
Heather
Mridul
Rey
Sophia
Tamira