Global Blackness Summer School ‘23 / For Wholeness. Black Being Well

_Art activation I “Beloved”

Gabrielle Goliath & Maneo Mohale

Sat 11 Nov, 10:30-12:00, Goodman Gallery, Rosebank

Join us for a Saturday morning of poetry readings, mimosas, conversation and Black feminist invocation with Gabrielle Goliath and Maneo Mohale, in response to Beloved, Goliath’s current exhibition of drawings and prints at the Goodman Gallery.

Beloved. Or as Christina Sharpe phrases it (with characteristic poise), be loved.

In this ongoing and very personal series of drawings and prints, Gabrielle Goliath summons and celebrates a chorus of both radical and quotidian femme presences: poets, priestesses, activists, artists, parents and prodigies. Beloved is an ode, a work of the heart – a labour of recognition, thanks and love.

In this select showing, Goliath pays homage with tender and sensuous lines to figures such as Gabeba Baderoon, Caster Semenya, Sylvia Wynter, Yoko Ono, Sade and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Portraits of Alek Wek and Desire Marea are touched with iridescent pigment dust, affirming an erotics of black femme beauty and possibility, whilst the solemn repose of Berenice and Melwyn Britz – mother and father to Camron Britz (d. 2017) – invokes a life-work of mourning.

Accompanying the drawings are two recent print series, published by Johannesburg-based print studio Edition Verso. Opening new expressive channels, each of these editioned works feature unique

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Reflecting on the exhibition and their ongoing, collaborative relationship, poet and RGC Research Associate Maneo Mohale will present a special reading of CODA: (Bird of Paradise) footnotes to Everything is a Deathly Flower.

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