Your Silence Will Not Protect You

The Elegy Reader (2026) expands on themes central to Gabrielle Goliath's Elegy (2015-ongoing). The Reader was produced and delivered in the wake of Elegy’s cancellation at the Venice Biennale, when the far-right South African cultural minister unlawfully cancelled the artists' confirmed participation. Weaving together poetry and texts from various geographies and responding to histories of displacement, colonialism and genocide, the reader became an important account and active participant in the restaging of Elegy amidst its cancellation.

Building on the encounters facilitated by the Reader, this event stages a series of poetry performances by tatiana nascimento and Victoria Adukwei Bulley alongside a discussion between the two performers. The speakers celebrate articulations of an active and poetic voice while critiquing dogmatic structures and censorship that corrode our right to cultural expression.

Together, the performances and  discussion encompass spoken word, translation, and publishing as means towards alternative forms of collective and participatory representation. Taking its title from Audre Lorde’s 1977 speech and essay ‘The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action’, Your Silence Will Not Protect You presents its audience with the vulnerability, and strength, of speaking one’s self, and encourages us to consider the importance of the language with which it is spoken. 

Doors open at 5.30pm; event starts at 6pm and ends at 8pm.

Image credit: Gabrielle Goliath, Elegy, 2015—. Photo by Zunis.