LONG ISLAND CITY, NY.- MoMA PS1 presents the US premiere of Gabrielle Goliath’s (South African, b. 1983) acclaimed video series Personal Accounts (2024–ongoing). Goliath’s moving-image installation, spanning MoMA PS1’s intimate second-floor gallery and corridors, responds to the impacts of patriarchal violence in a range of global contexts from Johannesburg to Kyiv. Intimately documenting survivor testimonials, in collaboration with the contributors, the artist has withheld narrative speech within the videos, instead portraying the moments in between participants’ recounts: breaths, sighs, cries, humming, and even laughter. Goliath’s sonic cycles trouble false binaries of the ‘voiced’ and ‘voiceless,’ revealing the enormity of what can be conveyed in moments of perceived silence. The gestures and spaces between words open into a crescendo of communal expression that foregrounds empathetic registers beyond textual meaning.
Following the series’s inclusion in the 2024 Venice Biennale, the expanded presentation at PS1 features five cycles, including works filmed in regions such as Lake Como, Johannesburg, and Edinburgh. The exhibition includes the debut of a new chapter with women and queer soldiers and civilians based in Kyiv titled Personal Accounts (a quiet rush) (2025). Another example, Personal Accounts (Lago di Como) (2024) centers Diarra, a Senegalese immigrant living in Como who has survived sexual violence and has since rebuilt her life as an entrepreneur. Filmed in Johannesburg, Personal Accounts (There’s a river of birds in migration) depicts a community of collaborators and friends who share songs, poems, and stories of trans survival in South Africa.. Centering intersectional narratives of survival and repair, Personal Accounts keys into the power of embodied listening, and non-verbal expression.
Gabrielle Goliath is an artist who lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has exhibited at Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh, UK (2024); the 60th Venice Biennale (2024); Dallas Contemporary (2022); Kunsthaus Baselland (2022); Konsthall C, Stockholm (2021); Göteborgs Konsthall (2020); and Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris (2020). Her works are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Mudam Museum of Modern Art; Kunsthalle Zürich; TATE Modern; Frac Bretagne; Iziko South African National Gallery; Johannesburg Art Gallery; and Wits Art Museum, among others.
She is the recipient of the Future Generation Art Prize – Special Prize (2019), the Standard Bank Young Artist Award (2019), and the Institut Français, Afrique en Créations Prize at the Bamako Biennale (2017). Goliath will also be included in New Photography: Lines of Belonging, on view at The Museum of Modern Art from September 14, 2025, through January 17, 2026.
Gabrielle Goliath: Personal Accounts is organized by Ruba Katrib, Chief Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs, MoMA PS1.
