R.I.P HYURO
It’s with a great sadness that I attempt to write about my friendship and working relationship with Tamara, both intricately entwined over these last 10 years. I lose my language when attempting to put into words just what it was about her that was so special, so meaningful for Nuart and personally. Nuart isn’t just an “event” -a reality readily available for others to scrutinise. It is also the name of a family, of a network of nodes, of a series of collective thoughts and feelings that are made material by others each year. It is the name of aspects of our collective lives that lie hidden - aspects which artists are tasked with revealing. No one achieved this more so than Hyuro. I’ve wondered often how she managed this, how her muted palette and line could convey information that would lay deep in the bone. Like a song or a poem, but somehow greater than both. Tamara seemed to work between the world and the wall, never just on it. Walls are heavy, material, of this world, they are the foundation of the culture we work with and difficult to ignore. But somehow, between the form and the content, she dematerialised them, took them from one place and situated them somewhere between worlds. The space between the street and the building, the space between words.
Perhaps this is why it’s difficult to write about, existing as it does between yes and no.
She had a unique ability to make us aware of this invisible space. She invoked something special from what is ordinary and did so with clear social and political resonances. Poetry made tangible. It sounds paradoxical, and it is. Hyuro summoned up feelings that allowed us to distinguish our own voice and direction, in the cacophony of noise that contemporary living brings. Her work always allowing for the viewer to feel and cultivate energy from within -it is a fundamentally giving work. It recognises that it is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors of their mistakes whilst at the same time showing us, that collective liberation promises a greater, deeper freedom than the individual freedoms we too readily accept.
And then words fail me again, there is something about silence, in its many forms and iterations, that both the artist and her work embody. And each word that I write seems to detract, rather than add to what she managed to achieve. I guess in the end, she allowed us to see better, and seeing better allows us to be better. To reflect on “being”… and for this we owe a debt of gratitude. It's been an absolute honour and privilege to be part of Hyuro's story, R.I.P dear friend.
Martyn Reed
The images represent works between 2011-2020 for Nuart Stavanger, Bergen and Aberdeen
