Two new exhibitions from international artists explore personal experiences of trauma from the perspective of recovery and regeneration.
Talbot Rice Gallery presents the first solo exhibitions staged in the UK by contemporary artists Gabrielle Goliath and Guadalupe Maravilla.
Goliath’s Personal Accounts and Piedras de Fuego (Fire Stones) by Maravilla, open to the public on Saturday October 26, 2024, and run until Saturday 15 Feb 2025.
Both exhibitions draw inspiration from stories of healing and repair, celebrating the personal endurance that enables individuals to survive, and also thrive, following experiences of trauma.
A global conversation
South African artist Gabrielle Goliath describes Personal Accounts as a trans-national, decolonial, black feminist project, exploring the many ways people experience and survive patriarchal violence around the world.
The exhibition comprises a series of immersive video and soundscapes presented in the Gallery’s white space, charting the lived experience of collaborating survivors.
Produced in Johannesburg, Tunis, Oslo, Como, and now Edinburgh, Personal Accounts sees Goliath collaborate with members of local communities, whose shared experiences of survival create a new collection of portraits in each place.
In all iterations, the spoken words of participants are withheld, communicating each individual’s experience through body language, gesture and emotion. Goliath draws these diverse experiences and stories of survival into an empathetic conversation about healing and repair.
“Personal Accounts is all about collaboration and community care. Filming and now exhibiting a new cycle of the work here in Edinburgh exemplified this ethos thanks to the commitment and attentiveness of the team at Talbot Rice Gallery, and the open-hearted collaboration of a local community of survivors and allies.”
–Gabrielle GoliathArtist
Healing Journeys
Presented in parallel, Guadalupe Maravilla’s Piedras de Fuego (Fire Stones), is set to transform the Georgian Gallery into a space for recovery and regeneration.
The exhibition looks to the artist’s past, including his journey as an undocumented migrant and a diagnosis of cancer, which inspired a need for deeper reflection.
Maravilla retraces the journey he took as an eight-year-old undocumented and unaccompanied migrant, fleeing civil war from his home in El Salvador and travelling to the USA. Bringing together these stories with teachings from healers around the world, Maravilla’s work includes sculptures, paintings and murals.
Objects collected on his journey become part of towering shrine-like sculptures, Disease Throwers, which carry gongs used in sound ceremonies, while specially created soundscapes featuring flute, chimes, harmonica and voice, release tension and toxins in the listener.
“While ill, I learned a lot about plant medicine and other ancient healing practices from working with curanderos (healers), shamans and witches. They taught me to get to the source of my trauma—being separated from my family, witnessing war and violence—in order to heal.”
-Guadalupe MaravillaArtist
Acclaimed Artists
Gabrielle Goliath is an artist from South Africa, whose work has been shown across South Africa and internationally. Her work features in numerous public and private collections, including MoMA, Kunsthalle Zürich, TATE Modern, Frac Bretagne, Iziko South African National Gallery, and Johannesburg Art Gallery.
She has won a number of awards including a 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).
Guadalupe Maravilla lives and works in Manhattan. His work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Guggenheim Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art, all in New York, in addition Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
He has presented solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, among others.
“Working with and watching these tremendous artists as they conceptualise, produce and install their artworks in our gallery, I am in awe of the dignity and compassion they have for the different subjects they pursue and the cathartic experience of being in and around their artworks. How fortunate we are to have their artworks here in Edinburgh.”
–Tessa GiblinDirector of Talbot Rice Gallery
