She reimagines “soft, feminine, flimsy” hijabs as hardened, reflective, glass-like sculptural forms, radically transforming the material qualities of her medium. Girie’s works explore the tension between the material and metaphorical hardness and softness suggested by her works, drawing attention to the complexity of identifying as a Muslim woman. Girie freezes the folds, gathers and ripples of the hijab as it is draped over wooden frames, as if falling. She employs these wooden frames – originally stretchers from traditional canvases – to form the armatures for the fabric, which seems caught in motion.The wooden frames associate the hijab with another fabric surface that is steeped in cultural history, the painter’s canvas. In juxtaposing the canvas frame and the hijab, her works walk a delicate line between display and discretion, revelation and cloaking.
Her ongoing reference to the tradition of painting also suggests a blurring of the boundaries between painting and sculpture. This subtly draws attention to surface in a way that recalls Western Modernism’s preoccupation with addressing or subverting the “flatness” of painting, while insisting that art is far more personal, and far richer in meaning, than just that.
Girie holds a BA Fine Art from the University of Witwatersrand. She was the recipient of the Wits Young Artist Award in 2021, and in the same year participated in RMB’s Talent Unlocked programme. In 2022, she exhibited as part of the Unearthed section at Turbine Art Fair (a platform highlighting new talent) and was selected to participate in the highly competitive JP Morgan Abadali mentorship and commissioning project. In 2023 her work has been exhibited at Investec Cape Town Art Fair and in Soft Power, a group show by Guns & Rain in London.