Silly Bitch

Soup presents the gallery’s fourteenth exhibition, Tulani Hlalo’s solo exhibition ‘Silly Bitch’⁣, curated by Georgia Stephenson. Hlalo (b. 1994, Newcastle upon Tyne) is a British-Zimbabwean artist living and working in Glasgow. She completed her BA in Fine Art from Manchester School of Art in 2017.

Comprising textile, moving image, performance, sculpture and installation, Hlalo’s recent bodies of work borrow from the niche subculture of competitive dog grooming as a visual language to explore how identity is at once defined and changeable. Employing playfulness and humour, as well as bizarre or otherwise unconventional imagery, her research examines a search for one’s sense of belonging and explores what it might mean to exist between cultures. The outlandish, fictional grooms present in her tufted textile and film works raise questions about consent, expectation, categorisation and the physical representation of identity, while reflecting on staged or constructed performance within societal, racial or cultural contexts.

‘Silly Bitch’ sees the gallery space transformed into an immersive environment recalling both a dog-show competition tent and gymnasium performance staging, with electric blue drapery lending to a particularly kitsch concept of opulence or glamour. Within, Hlalo presents four new wall-mounted textiles - hand-tufted rugs in the form of flattened dog pelts, an artistic twist on the bear skin rug or taxidermied trophy head. Each groom addresses contemporary concerns surrounding costume or camouflage, either a fabricated, public-facing demonstration of identity or an uncontrollable, unavoidable example of othered-ness.

Alongside, Hlalo’s latest moving-image work sees her take on the role of a prize-winning poodle. Set against a stereotypical photography-studio backdrop, the artist dons crafted claws, a tufted tail and matching cuffs as well as a comically oversized rosette, appearing agitated, impatient or otherwise indifferent to the imagined prompt and circumstance taking place around her.