Overview
- Elegy, which opens May 5 at the Chiesa di Sant’Antonin in Venice, will run through July 31 near the Biennale’s main venues.
- South Africa’s arts minister Gayton McKenzie canceled the state pavilion in January after calling the work highly divisive for including a tribute to Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada.
- An urgent court bid by artist Gabrielle Goliath and curator Ingrid Masondo was rejected on February 11 by Judge Mamoloko Kubushi, and they have now appealed as McKenzie files notice to oppose.
- The government named no replacement, so the official South African pavilion at the Arsenale will remain vacant for the 2026 edition.
- The project, a performance-and-video memorial to victims of gendered and racialized violence that now honors Abu Nada, will show as an eight-screen installation in Venice and then travel to Ibraaz in London in October with support from the Bertha Foundation and Ibraaz.