Art Now: Hylozoic Desires 28 February - 25 August 2025

On 28 February, Tate Britain will open an exhibition of new work by artist duo Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser). Entitled The Hedge of Halomancy, the installation includes a film and an embroidered tapestry which interweave real and imagined histories from the Indian subcontinent. The exhibition runs in parallel with a large-scale new commission by Hylozoic/Desires at Somerset House. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of Art Now, Tate Britain’s ongoing series of free exhibitions showcasing emerging talent and new developments in the contemporary British art scene.

In The Hedge of Halomancy, Hylozoic/Desires excavate the lost archive of the Inland Customs Line, a 4,000km barrier which comprised 2,500km of planted hedge. This barrier was created by the British Empire in the 19th century to prevent salt smuggling between British-occupied territories and neighbouring independent states. The installation considers this ‘hedge’ as a poetic and political space, a partition full of perforations that continue to fray, tear and rip into the present.

At the heart of the exhibition is a 23-minute film installation set in a salt-encrusted frame. It focuses on Mayalee, a character inspired by a courtesan who defied the British Empire’s attempts to cut off her stipends of salt. The film shows her using this salt to conduct ‘halomancy’ (salt divinations) which reach across the hedge to its British commissioner Allan Octavian Hume. Termites eat into the hedge, small revolutions begin to erupt, and Hume’s belief in the project slowly erodes as perhaps Mayalee’s prophecies change the course of history. The Victorian gown she wears at the end of the film, made from plastic waste from the salt pans and a headdress of silver and pearls, is also displayed on an adjacent wall.

Alongside the film is an embroidered tapestry, entitled Mokshapat (Snakes and Ladders). It is woven as mashru fabric, cotton on one side and silk on the other. It is a poignant material symbolising unity in difference, undermining the divisions sown by the salt hedge. The embroidery also incorporates other materials including climbing rope, acacia seeds, rock salt and fishing line. Its design is loosely based on the board game Mokshapat, meaning ‘liberation’, originally played in India to represent the paths towards enlightenment or entrapment in cycles of rebirth, and later brought to England and renamed ‘snakes and ladders’.

In parallel to Tate Britain’s exhibition, Hylozoic/Desires have undertaken a new multi-dimensional project as a part of Somerset House’s 25th birthday programme, open until 27 April 2025. Salt Cosmologies consists of a spectacular open-air installation of block printed fabric, 80 metres long and over 2 metres high, in the Edmond J. Safra Court, as well as a compelling exhibition set along the newly-restored Salt Stair and within the nearby gallery space that once administered Britain’s tax on salt. In addition, the film at the centre of Tate Britain’s installation is also on display as part of 16th Sharjah Biennial until 15 June 2025.

Since the 1990s, Tate Britain’s Art Now exhibitions have recognised talent at its outset and provided a launch pad for artists who have gone on to become established figures on the international art scene. Over the last 30 years, the series has been an important public platform for the likes of Tacita Dean, Ed Atkins, Fiona Banner, Hurvin Anderson and Doris Salcedo.