A South African artist is suing her country’s culture minister to demand that she can represent her country at this year’s Venice Biennale with a work paying tribute to a dead Palestinian poet — the latest development in a furor that is jeopardizing South Africa’s participation in the major international art exhibition.
The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in Pretoria, accuses Gayton McKenzie, the minister, of acting unlawfully and unconstitutionally by ignoring the recommendation of an independent panel that Gabrielle Goliath, 42, should be South Africa’s representative at the prestigious event.
The dispute underscores how the war in Gaza continues to cast a shadow over major culture events, even months after Israel and Hamas agreed on a cease-fire.
Goliath’s planned show, called “Elegy,” was to feature a video-based work in which singers paid tribute to a Palestinian poet killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Although South Africa’s government has accused Israel of committing genocide in the war in Gaza, McKenzie said in a letter in December, published in the lawsuit, that “it would not be wise nor defensible” for him to support an artwork that comments on events in the Middle East when South Africa is facing its own “unjustified accusations of genocide.” President Trump has repeatedly asserted that white farmers in South Africa are victims of “a genocide.”
A spokeswoman for the culture minister declined to comment on the lawsuit on Thursday, but McKenzie said in a news release this month that he had the right to ignore the selection committee’s recommendation. “We shall give access at the Biennale to artists who promote our country,” he said. “That is my position and it is not something I will be bullied or shamed about.”
During the event, which runs from May 9 to Nov. 22, countries host exhibitions in national pavilions, alongside a main group show featuring artworks chosen by an independent curator.
South Africa first presented a pavilion in 1950, and in recent decades has regularly sent artists to Venice to represent the country. Some of them have attracted international acclaim: In 2017, critics praised Candice Breitz’s “Love Story,” a film in which Alec Baldwin and Julianne Moore read out refugees’ stories.
Goliath, whose work was featured in the main exhibition for the Biennale’s last edition, is a video and performance artist. Other international presentations of her work include an ongoing exhibition at MoMA PS1, the contemporary art museum in New York.
In the lawsuit, Goliath says she has staged “Elegy” in various forms for more than a decade. In the work, female singers step onto a dais and hold a sung note for as long as possible. A curatorial statement for the exhibition, included in the lawsuit, says the work pays tribute to women and gay and trans people who have died by violent means.
In Venice, the work was to feature three sections: one paying tribute to a South African teenager who was murdered in 2014; a second mourning two Namibian women killed by German colonial forces in the early 20th century; and a third section dedicated to the Palestinian poet.
Since deciding Goliath’s “Elegy” was inappropriate for Venice, the culture ministry has tried to find an alternative artist. On Tuesday, the Art Newspaper reported that a 30-member collective known as Beyond the Frames was in discussion with the ministry about staging a show called “Shameless Rebellions: A South African Chorus” in the country’s pavilion.
Beyond the Frame’s Facebook page says the group holds weekly life drawing classes in Cape Town “celebrating the beauty of the human form.” Hannes Koekemoer, a spokesman for the collective, declined to comment on the negotiations, citing Goliath’s legal action.
Under the Biennale’s rules, countries were required to submit details of their national pavilions by Jan. 10. But Cristiana Costanzo, a spokeswoman for the event, said in an email that deadlines were “applied with the greatest flexibility” to ensure wide participation.
In the lawsuit, Goliath asks South Africa’s High Court to rule by early February so that she would still have time to take her show to Venice.
The furor began in early December, when Art Periodic, a nonprofit that was running South Africa’s pavilion selection process, informed Goliath that she had been chosen for Venice. Art Periodic declined an interview request for this article.
On Dec. 22, according to the legal documents, McKenzie wrote to Art Periodic to say he had learned about the artwork it had selected and was concerned that it “centers on the subject of Palestine.”
Less than two weeks later, on Jan. 2, the minister wrote to Art Periodic to say that negotiations over the pavilion had “reached an impasse” and that he was terminating the ministry’s agreement with Art Periodic to run the show. The minister said in the letter, which is included in the legal filings, that he would instead use the pavilion to showcase “a positive message that will help to repudiate the lies and misinformation that South Africa is a genocidal country.”
The decision caused a storm in South Africa’s art world, and on Jan. 10 McKenzie said in a news release that his concerns stemmed from learning that a “foreign power” had offered to buy the art from the pavilion. He said he feared that South Africa’s pavilion could be used as a proxy “to endorse a geopolitical message about the actions of Israel in Gaza.”
Goliath says in her lawsuit that this refers to Qatar Museums contacting Art Periodic to express interest in helping finance the pavilion or buying its contents, but that the offer had come to nothing.
Annchen Bronkowski, a University of Cape Town researcher who has written a history of South Africa’s participation in the Biennale, said in an interview that the minister’s reasons for not endorsing Goliath’s show seemed “to contradict the South African government’s own stance on Israel.”
But Bronkowski said that South African lawmakers had long appeared to have “misunderstood” the Venice Biennale’s purpose. Politicians appeared to think the pavilion should “promote South Africa and say, ‘We’re a strong democracy, we have a vibrant economy,’” she said, when the artists wanted to use it to “talk about much more complex social and political issues.”
South Africa is not the only country to vacillate over sending artists whose work touches on events in the Middle East to the Biennale. Last year, Creative Australia chose Khaled Sabsadi, a Lebanese-Australian artist, to represent Australia at this year’s even, only to drop him five days later because of an uproar over an artwork he made many years ago that featured a former leader of Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group that violently opposes Israel. A few months later, Creative Australia reversed its decision again and said Sabsadi would go to Venice after all.
The conflict in Gaza could also rear its head in Venice in May, with some pro-Palestinian activists and artists threatening to protest Israel’s participation in the event.
In South Africa’s case, it is unclear whether the culture ministry will find anyone willing to replace Goliath given the legal action. “I would be surprised if they do,” Bronkowski said. “The South African art world is so small.”
Regardless of whether she gets to Venice, Goliath’s studio said in an emailed statement that she would finish the latest iteration of “Elegy,” and that this week she was filming the tribute to the Palestinian poet with 16 female opera singers.
Alex Marshall is a Times reporter covering European culture. He is based in London.
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