Gabrielle Goliath's 'Bearing' at Raffaella Cortese, Milan

Gabrielle Goliath's solo exhibition 'Bearing' is on view at Raffaella Cortese in Milan until September 3, 2026. The show follows the controversy surrounding her performance 'Elegy', which was initially selected for the South African Pavilion at the 2026 Venice Biennale but was suspended due to its reference to Palestinian poet Heba Abunada, killed in Gaza in 2023. 'Elegy' was later hosted at Chiesa di Sant'Antonin in Venice through support from Bertha Foundation, Ibraaz, and Raffaella Cortese. 'Bearing' features paintings and drawings in oils, watercolors, and pastels, departing from Goliath's usual immersive, sound-based installations. The title alludes to carrying, supporting, enduring, and bearing weight. The works depict Black, brown, femme, and queer bodies that sustain the world while remaining marginalized, never portrayed as victims but as luminous, vulnerable, and capable of intimacy and desire. Goliath interrogates the Eurocentric tradition of the nude, subverting its visual grammar. Her eroticism avoids provocation or trauma aestheticization, instead constructing an emotional space for Black, feminist, and queer desire outside dominant narratives. The exhibition also engages with figures like Primo Levi, Käthe Kollwitz, and Kara Walker, weaving memory, violence, love, and survival into a deeply personal practice Goliath describes as a 'life-work' affirming life within and beyond conditions of impossibility.