• Issue
  • Nov 01, 2023

Up Close: Tromarama

Installation view of TROMARAMA ’s Growing Pillars, 2023, on the M+ Facade, Hong Kong, 2023. Photo by Moving Image Studio. Courtesy of M+.

What is a monument? What values do monuments project into civic spaces? And what does it mean to work in a monumental format? The three-person collective Tromarama, comprised of Febie Babyrose, Herbert Hans, and Ruddy Hatumena, conceived of their moving-image work Growing Pillars (2023) for the giant 65-by-110-meter screen on the M+ Facade as an intimate family tribute. Instead of digging into a nation’s history for the iconography of heroic and nationalistic tropes, each member of Tromarama explored materials from their own families’ past, uncovering stories—in some cases unknown to them about their own relatives—that revealed details of their individual heritage and, more widely, the stories of a nation in the postcolonial era.