M+ announces Growing Pillars, a new M+ Facade commission by artist collective Tromarama

M+, Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, is pleased to present Growing Pillars, a new moving image commission by Indonesian artist collective Tromarama. The work will be displayed on the M+ Facade at night from Friday, 6 October to Sunday, 31 December 2023, and will be enriched by a series of animation workshops.

Growing Pillars envisages the M+ Facade as a giant monument on the Hong Kong skyline. With this commission, Tromarama—consisting of Febie Babyrose, Herbert Hans, and Ruddy Hatumena—challenges the conception of monuments and their ownership, iconography, and value in contemporary society. The collective selected objects, video clips, and images from their personal archives, such as family photos, cassettes, and books, to compose a filmic movement overlaid by animated objects from their childhood homes. The symbols and motifs reflect the beauty and turbulence of life, evoking the intimacy of home and the intricacy of memory. Although personal archives are fragile, they serve as foundational support for growth and forming one’s worldview. The moving collage is layered with cleaning gestures inspired by the Balinese tradition of Melukat, a ritual that purifies the body, mind, and soul.

Growing Pillars is infused with emotion, care and humour. Presented on M+ Facade, it creates an ambiguous space where the personal and the societal, the private and the public collide.

Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, says, ‘M+ is dedicated to championing talents from Asia and deepening our engagement with artists and audiences across the region. This commission speaks to our role as a pioneering museum of global visual culture that celebrates the profundity of everyday objects in our personal and public lives. The work encapsulates how technology and digital media can be used in conversation with history, tradition, and memory. I am delighted to showcase yet another successful project on the M+ Facade.’

Doryun Chong, Deputy Director, Curatorial and Chief Curator, M+, says, ‘Tromarama pioneers the incorporation of technology and algorithms into art, and their ability to convey a sense of tactility and emotion speaks to their brilliance. Their nuanced explorations of identity formulation and destabilisation make them one of the most exciting rising collectives in Asia. Growing Pillars, our new commission, makes spectacular use of the M+ Facade by considering its public place in the city’s harbour landscape and reconceptualising its purpose as a monument.’

Tromarama says, ‘We are ecstatic to return to Hong Kong with a moving image commission of such a scale. The word “pillars” in the work title refers to how archives can serve as a foundation, support system, or a base. All the archives we look into and choose as material for making the work are growing structures that inform and navigate our worldview. We hope this new work incites questions about storytelling and memory for viewers.’

Coinciding with the presentation of Growing Pillars, Tromarama will hold a family workshop at M+, inviting adults and children to create stop-motion animation with family objects and share their memories. The artist-led session on 7 October 2023 is now available for online registration. Additional sessions led by M+ Educators will take place in November 2023 as part of the museum’s Family Day programme. For workshop and ticketing details, please refer to the M+ website.

Remarks

About Tromarama
Tromarama is a Jakarta- and Bandung-based artist collective founded in 2006 by Febie Babyrose, Herbert Hans, and Ruddy Hatumena. The trio met while studying at the Institute Technology of Bandung, and soon they started to create works that combined video, installation, computer programming, and public participation. Underpinning their artmaking is their interest in the influence of digital media on society’s perception of its surroundings. Channelling language, text, wit, and interaction, Tromarama reflects on the cornerstones of Indonesia’s political and cultural environment as well as perceptive engagement in our global hyperreality.

About M+
M+ is a museum dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting visual art, design and architecture, moving image, and Hong Kong visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, it is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world, with a bold ambition to establish ourselves as one of the world’s leading cultural institutions. M+ is a new kind of museum that reflects our unique time and place, a museum that builds on Hong Kong’s historic balance of the local and the international to define a distinctive and innovative voice for Asia’s twenty-first century.

About the West Kowloon Cultural District
The West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest and most ambitious cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong on forty hectares of reclaimed land located alongside Victoria Harbour. With a varied mix of theatres, performance spaces, and museums, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, providing twenty-three hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.