At a young age, Tamara Djurovic, aka Hyuro, was already taking interest in murals. She grew up in Argentina where there’s a rich culture surrounding public spaces and murals have always been a vital part.
“[I’m] not sure in which moment I started to love it, or if it was always there,” Djurovic told Colossal, “I think I could have never imagined the strong impact that working on public spaces had on me.”
Her work is usually centered on portraying the complex side of human beings. She explores how our inner lives have an impact on our relationships with ourselves and with others. “I’m not interested in these subjects only from a representation perspective, but as well as a way to keep understanding and knowing myself and somehow try to understand, or digest better the world where we live in,” she shared.
2018 has been a productive year for Hyuro who painted massive murals from different countries such as Brazil, Spain, Italy, Belgium, and The Netherlands. By painting massive images of everyday life and different emotions, she expressed the complexities of humanity in a creative and influential way.
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¨Process of immigration¨- Vilvoorde, Belgium 2018. For this project I was asked to speak about the Spanish immigration in Vilvoorde. One in three inhabitants of Vilvoorde is of Spanish descent. Noteworthy is that almost all of them come from the same village, from Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo, a place in the province of Córdoba in Andalusia. In the first decade of the twentieth century, the mining area of Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo was one of the most important industrial centers of Andalusia. Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo was therefore primarily a working class city, where the living conditions, as in many other worker cities, were not too good. In the late 1950s, mining activity disappears from Peñarroya-Pueblonuevo. The closure of the ore mines and associated industries results in a strong unemployment. In Belgium, on the other hand, workers were needed. Between 1960 and 1970 many residents emigrate to Belgium to work in the mines and the steel industry and to build a new life. Many settle in Vilvoorde, a city that was expanding its chemical and metalworking industry and needed skilled workers. When you walk around Vilvoorde, the Spanish presence is noticeable. You constantly hear Spanish conversations on the street. There are Spanish cafes, Spanish shops and there is a tapas restaurant. The image represents the immigration process, the blanket refers to the culture, the customs that we carry within us. Many special thanks to @jeroen.matthys and to everyone that took part during the process. xx
A post shared by Tamara Djurovic (@h_y_u_r_o) on Oct 29, 2018 at 2:37am PDT
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¨LÁrzdora¨- Cotignola, Italy 2018. The structure and composition of a family in Cotignola during the Eighteenth Century was marked by the lack of privacy, due to a multigenerational family life, with a codified and accepted hierarchical structure and strict rules. In this regime, all women were almost treated as minors and wives were always under marital authority. Paradoxically, what for a woman was the only form of emancipation from paternal authority – that is to say, marriage – gave rise to a new submission, the one to the husband. It was unavoidable, therefore, that from her first admission to the new family after her marriage, the daughter-in-law would have been very far from being able to lead the house, being, in fact, the last arrival and often, as they say, “the last wheel of the wagon” in family’s hierarchy. The entry of the young bride into the new family was accompanied by the mother-in-law’s ritual, who welcomed the daughter-in-law "on the stairs with a big spoon", offered as assignment of domestic chores. For a woman who wanted to compete with men in Romagna, there is a name that still exists, which is “Árzdora”: a woman who wants to go beyond assigned functions in a patriarchal society and show her skills by competing with her husband. Many special thanks to @federico.settembrini and to all Cotignola neighbors for their hospitality. xx
A post shared by Tamara Djurovic (@h_y_u_r_o) on Jul 31, 2018 at 1:01am PDT
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¨Patriarcado¨ Vila-Real, Spain 2018 for TEST Festival. Recently in Spain a sentence was issued regarding a trial for a gang rape of five young men to an 18-year-old girl. The sentence declares them guilty of sexual abuse. According to the judges there was no rape since they did not perceive violence or intimidation, so they refuse to condemn them for sexual assault and opt for the slightest criminal type of sexual abuse. A sentence that has sent tens of thousands of people out into the streets in a country that on March 8th experienced a historic feminist strike to say enough to violence, inequality and discrimination suffered by women. The sentence demonstrates that all the prejudices and gender stereotypes that occur in sexual violence are reproduced in the judicial system. There is an ideology behind it, a structure, the patriarchal system, which sneaks into all spaces of socialization. Currently the Supreme Court in Spain consists of 12 judges, 10 men and 2 women. The Supreme Court's Board of Directors is made up of 13 members. All men. The High Court is composed of 79 members, 68 men. As for the General Council of the Judiciary, of its 22 members, only 8 are women. The Penal Section of the General Codification Commission is composed entirely of men, whose average age exceeds 67 years. This wall is a denunciation of the patriarchal justice of Spain. The "democratic Spain" started with a macho, catholic and classist legislation, historical heritage of an authoritarian and fascist regime that has never really been overcome, perceived by citizens as a conservative entity that is forceful or permissive depending on who it is applied to. Special thanks to @pascualarnal for everything. Thanks to all Vila-Real neighbors for their friendship xx ¨
A post shared by Tamara Djurovic (@h_y_u_r_o) on May 30, 2018 at 6:31am PDT
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¨Education¨ Sagunto, Spain 2018 for @mesquemurs_sagunt . This wall is located in the courtyard of a primary public school. It has been a pleasure to have the opportunity to talk with different groups of children and answer the amount of questions they asked, motivated by an inexhaustible longing to know and discover new things. It is a pity to see how with the age that restlessness goes away. This wall talks about the current educational system in Spain, an education that doesn´t accompany, nor encourages the curiosity, creativity and motivation that every child carries within. The Spanish educational system remains anchored in a method based on the previous industrial revolution. Schools continue to prioritize a rigid educational method, lacking in creativity, where memory continues to play a central role. A training that points to a good performance of exams. My two kids go to public schools, children spend the most time of the day at school, almost eight hours a day. Practically their activities take place within the school, the average of outdoor activities are between five and six a year, some courses more, others less, activities that decreases as they grow. In some way they end up forming within spaces that take care of teaching them since small how to integrate and submit into the relationships of power and domination. Instead of stimulating the desire to challenge and question doctrines, forcing them to look for alternatives, to use their imagination and proceed freely under their own intuition, we continue with an educational system that prefers to ensure that people are indoctrinated and conformed, that they be obedient and do not ask many questions so that satisfactorily assume the assigned roles. Special thanks to @cesar.goce and everyone involved in this project. Many thanks to all Mediterranean sckool people for the love and care. xx
A post shared by Tamara Djurovic (@h_y_u_r_o) on May 15, 2018 at 9:01am PDT
