TUR presents a new solo exhibition by The Hague based South African artist Shana de Villiers

TUR presents a new solo exhibition by The Hague based South African artist Shana de Villiers. I want to Be Glue! Opens on 27 May at 18:00 as part of Riga Art Week and can be seen until 27 June. 

Shana de Villiers’ I want to Be Glue! transforms TUR into the dwelling place of a serpentine creature. Appearing to burst from within the space, the snake emerges as something strangely tender: a patchworked body stitched together from different textures and mythologies. Visitors are invited to approach the creature directly, to sit before her and listen. Fragments of sound, whispered texts, and interventions by costumed mediators guide the encounter, shaping an environment that moves between playfulness, intimacy, and unease. 

Based in The Hague and originally from South Africa, de Villiers works across sculpture, performance, text, and installation. Their practice moves between mythology, craft, internet-age imagery, and storytelling, often returning to figures that societies have cast as monstrous. Sewing and assemblage play an important role within this sculptural environment. Fragments of stories, emotional states, and cultural references are stitched into forms of connection. In I want to Be Glue!, this process becomes a way of thinking through how people relate to what they fear or struggle to recognise as familiar. 

The exhibition draws on both South African and Baltic serpent mythologies, tracing how snakes repeatedly appear across cultures as symbols of transformation, danger, wisdom, and protection. Here, the serpent becomes a reflection of the ways societies construct “others”: those perceived as excessive, threatening, or difficult to place. De Villiers embraces the snake as a figure onto which anxieties and desires have long been projected, while also reclaiming it as something vulnerable and disarming. The creature encountered at TUR invites visitors to move closer to what they might otherwise keep at a distance, opening a space in which ignorance can gradually shift into recognition. 

Running throughout the exhibition is the suggestion that monstrosity is never located entirely outside ourselves. In a contemporary climate shaped by fear-mongering and increasingly rigid social divisions, I want to Be Glue! proposes another mode of encounter. The exhibition asks what becomes possible when fear gives way to curiosity, and when the unfamiliar is approached with attention rather than suspicion. Through sculpture, sound, performance, and participation, de Villiers constructs a temporary world in which the monstrous becomes something that can be listened to and perhaps even recognised within ourselves. 

Ancient Baltic traditions welcomed the grass snake into the home, keeping it warm through the winter and feeding it milk as a protective presence tied to domestic life and prosperity. I want to Be Glue! returns to this possibility of radical warmth, proposing closeness where fear might otherwise create distance. 

Curator and text: Edd Schouten 

Sound Design: Elif Gülin Soğuksu 

Project Manager: Kristīne Ercika 

Production Manager: Ada Ruszkiewicz

Technical support: Oto Holgers Ozoliņš 

Graphic Design: Andris Kaļiņins 

Mustache Design: Kristians Aglonietis 

Assistance and Performance: Patrīcija Māra Vilsone and Laura Melbārde 

The exhibition is supported by VKKF, Mondriaan Fonds and STROOM The Hague. The exhibition includes excerpts from the poetry of Ingrid Jonker, courtesy of the Ingrid Jonker Trust. 

About TUR 

TUR is a space dedicated to contemporary art shaped through an ongoing exchange between artists, curators, and the space itself. Located within a large post-industrial building in Tallinas ielas kvartāls, TUR approaches exhibition-making as a process of dialogue with the site’s volume, acoustics, light, and changing atmosphere. Rather than functioning as a neutral container, the space actively informs the development of each exhibition. 

TUR’s annual programme follows a seasonal rhythm: three solo exhibitions in winter, three in summer, and a collaborative Fall exhibition developed together with a partner art space from another European city. The programme places a strong emphasis on long-term collaboration with artists, often beginning months before an exhibition opens. Since 2024, TUR’s June exhibitions have formed part of an exchange format with artists based in The Hague, who spend May in residence at TUR while developing new work in dialogue with the space and the local art community. Shana de Villiers’ I want to Be Glue! is part of this ongoing exchange. Alongside exhibitions, TUR regularly organises artist talk-concerts, performances, and public events that create additional ways for audiences to engage with artistic practices. In April TUR’s artistic director Edd Schouten was awarded the Annual Art Award of Latvia as Curator of the Year for 2025.