“I want to be glue! I want to sing for you!” Shana de Villiers

In the exhibition “I want to be glue! I want to sing for you!”, Shana de Villiers transforms their practice of creating magical, hybrid characters into a large-scale installation at TUR. Working across textile, soft sculpture, and performance, they create a vivid, theatrical environment shaped by Latvian and South African snake mythologies. Central to their work is the figure of the “monster” as something to be read rather than feared, a carrier of difference, memory, and transformation. Visitors encounter a world of glimmering surfaces, fragmented voices, and shifting forms, where the monstrous becomes both familiar and strangely inviting.

Curator: Edvards Shautens

Exhibition opening: May 27, 2026, at 18.00.

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About gallery:

TUR is a contemporary art space in Riga shaped through an ongoing exchange between artists, curator, and the space itself. Located in a large, cube-shaped post-industrial building, TUR’s exhibitions emerge through dialogue with its raw materiality, scale, light, textures, and evolving conditions. The space is approached not as a neutral container but as a collaborator, foregrounding a practice rooted in attentiveness and reciprocity.