The artists [selected] are channels to the minor keys. [They all] stand as a collective score... artists who work at the boundaries of form. These are artists whose practices seamlessly bleed into society. The structure is not abstractly determined... it is not organised in sections but in respect to undercurrent priorities.
Appointed Artistic Director of the Visual Arts Department in December 2024, Kouoh had fully developed the theoretical framework of the exhibition, artist selection, editorial structure, graphic identity, and spatial layout prior to her passing in May 2025. With the support of her family, La Biennale di Venezia committed to realizing the project exactly as she had conceived it.
Goliath and the curator Ingrid Masondo were to present a new iteration of the three-part, video-based project Elegy -a project begun in 2015 that has centred on femicide and the murder of LGBTQI+ people in South Africa. The version planned for the Biennale also addressed violence against women in Namibia and Gaza, and it was the new Gaza-related section that caused the controversy.
Goliath and Masondo were selected to represent South Africa at the 2026 Venice Biennale on 6 December last year, by a five-person selection committee composed of imminent members of the country's art community. The pair were to present a new iteration of Elegy- Goliath's decade-long project that has centred on femicide and the murder of LGBTQI+ people in South Africa.
