South Africa has scrapped a performance mourning victims of Israel's genocide in Gaza that was selected for the country's 2026 Venice Biennale pavilion. In a statement to Hyperallergic, a spokesperson for the nation's Department of Sport, Arts and Culture said the pavilion “should not be used to amplify similarly divisive global disputes that do not center South Africa’s own story,” adding: “We need to use our platforms to sell our country to the world.”

Artist Gabrielle Goliath and curator Ingrid Masondo's proposal for the South African presentation, titled Elegy after Goliath's decade-long vocal performance series, had been chosen for the Biennale by an independent committee in December. According to reporting by the South African publication Daily Maverick, the decision to reject the artwork originated from the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture's minister, Gayton McKenzie, the founder of the right-wing Patriotic Alliance party.

Goliath's pavilion performance would have addressed the "unfolding crisis of displacement and death in Gaza," according to a representative of her studio, reached via email by Hyperallergic. The performance was also expected to address the Israeli military's killing of the Palestinian poet Hiba Abu Nada, the femicide in South Africa, and the Herero and Nama genocide perpetuated by Germans in Namibia in the early 20th century. 

However, according to the Daily Maverick, McKenzie took issue with the proposal's content regarding Israel and Gaza, writing in an internal letter in December that the subject was "highly divisive in nature and relates to an ongoing international conflict that is widely polarising.” He then reportedly threatened to withdraw South Africa from the international art event if the work was not removed, a move decried by the country's pavilion selection committee as unconstitutional.

In a January 8 open letter, the members of the appointed Biennale selection committee defended their decision to accept Elegy.

"We affirm our continued and unequivocal support for the artist, the curator, and their project in the face of political pressure and attempts to silence free expression and compromise artistic integrity," reads the statement, signed by Greer Valley, Molemo Moiloa, Nomusa Makhubu, Sean O’Toole, and Tumelo Mosaka.

“We further reject all forms of censorship and intimidation that seek to curtail critical artistic practice or undermine the autonomy of cultural production,” the letter continues. The group characterized as concerning “intimacy, care, and listening, [and] creating space for reflection on loss and remembrance."