TAHLIAH SIMUMBA — A star that burns forever is a star that burns in me | GI Festival 2026

A star that burns forever is a star that burns in me marks the first solo exhibition by Scottish artist and musician Tahliah Simumba, also known as TAAHLIAH. The exhibition brings together a new body of work comprising a series of oil paintings on wooden panels accompanied by a durational sound installation.

Drawing on extensive research into pop-cultural figures whose aesthetics of transness exceed or unsettle vacuous identity labels, this body of work explores the unstable boundaries of the transfeminised image. The exhibition traces how figures both across and beyond trans identity have informed the visual codes that signify “successful” transsubjective iconography.

These questions emerge in dialogue with a text by Marquis Bey that frames transness as a primordial force, an openness set in motion by the first burning stars. This conceptual framework shapes Tahliah's approach to image-making, positioning this iconographic terrain not as a fixed taxonomy but as something…