Hiromi Tango: Hanamida 花涙

By Dr Patricia Jungfer

The exhibition Hanamida 花涙 (Flower Tears) is Hiromi Tango’s way of processing of her feelings, thoughts and emotions that are probably universal and likely to have been experienced by us all in recent years. A sickly withering plant with an exudate was the seed that led to the blossoming of this show. The orchid in her home was a treasure plant, a connection with her homeland and family. The white exudate was for Hiromi like the plant was crying, expressing the distress at its illness and a mirroring of the personal and universal distress.

Over the past three years, individuals and society at large have experienced multiple losses. In Australian communities there have been the losses associated with the bushfires of 2019-2020. These losses were not limited to property, they extended to life and our country’s biodiversity. Shortly after this the COVID pandemic resulted in loss of health, life, job security and community connections. On an individual level there is unlikely to be a single person who has not experienced some form of loss, and in many cases multiple losses, as a result of the pandemic. The impact of the pandemic was attenuated in 2021 and 2022 in Australia with multiple flood events, in some communities the floods exacerbated losses that arose in the bushfires. For Hiromi who lives in the far north of New South Wales and continues to have family ties in Japan, the past few years have been challenging with the cataclysmic events impacting directly on her. Although despite these traumas, this show, like a phoenix, rises from the detritus of these events.

Hanamida 花涙 (Flower Tears) continues the artistic practice of Hiromi, which is a response to her personal experiences and at the same time gives us all permission to reflect on our experiences. Throughout her career as an artist, Hiromi has focused on the expression of self and self-experience. Her work reflects the events and emotions in her life and there is a universality of emotions that she experiences. In conversation with Hiromi about her forthcoming show, we reflected on her practice and the impact of uncontrollable natural events on her current show. The work for this show as in others, ranges across several mediums. Her work has often incorporated performance and there is the desire to engage the audience in her work. Hanamida 花涙 (Flower Tears) incorporates her unique sculptures, oil painting, drawing and photography. Each work is linked to past works, retaining the use of dimensionality, and is shaped by her training in calligraphy. Hiromi hopes with this body of work that she has provided an opportunity for others to share the common and personal emotions expressed in the works and experience a healing after the past few tumultuous years.

Many moons have passed Beloved faces remain My heart's memory

No words to express Sadness deep inside of me Heavy like a stone

Gently wash away this weight Lightening my heart

Haiku Poems by Hiromi Tango

Hiromi has always enjoyed tending her garden, and plants have a special meaning for her; there is a healing component of working in her garden. She memorialises those that have been lost in her life with special and precious plants, tending these plants extends her ability to tend and treasure those that have gone from this world but remain in her heart. In 2022 an orchid—associated with a grandmother who recently died—became wilted and infected with white insects. The plant, to Hiromi, seemed to be crying, and its flowers and leaves wilted. Flowers and plants have symbolic meaning in all societies, at times the same flowers can mean different things to different communities, but the common theme in societies is the use of the flower as a metaphor for emotions that can be difficult to express. A painting in this exhibition of Shiragiku Hi no Tori 白菊火の鳥 (White Chrysanthemums Firebird) connects us to the artist’s Japanese culture, where the flower is used to reflect sympathy and remembrance in mourning rituals.

From the age of seven, the artist studied calligraphy with recognised Calligraphy Master Oda Sisei 織田子青 ,who passed away when Hiromi turned eighteen. Calligraphy is a visual art related to writing, hours will be spent practicing the letters which can be a meditative process for the person practicing the art. Specialised brushes, papers and inks result in a distinct mark making. Hiromi would make her own ink for her works, manipulating the inks viscosity for artistic effect. The images were produced with distinct gestures and movement. In this exhibition, Hiromi uses oils rather than inks and the calligraphic origin of her art asserts itself in the paintings, drawings and in her sculptures.

Hiromi has used this show to work through many of the emotions she has experienced over these past few years, mourning the loss of artworks in the floods and of beloved family members in Japan. The darkness of these losses is captured in her photographic work Hagoromo Hi no Tori 羽衣 火の鳥 (The Feather Mantle Firebird). In the images, Hiromi documents a performance where she is covering herself in black paint. While the works are on one level heavy and melancholy, the light of the vessel she is holding creates an illusion of the Firebird, suggesting that even in the depths of grief there can be hope. There are references in the images to her culture and it is a documentation of a personal mourning ritual. The wearing of a Kimono is especially poignant as her grandmothers were makers of kimonos. The fragility and transience of life is represented by the flowers that encircle her, the black paint covers her like the sorrow that can drown us when loss feels raw and overwhelming.

For Shiragiku Hi no Tori 白菊 火の鳥 (White Chrysanthemums Firebird), Hiromi has applied oils so that the image appears to be an abstract image. The sweeping gestures are derived from calligraphy and the incorporation of words written in calligraphy; her early training rebirthed in an alternative form. Hiromi continues her use of calligraphy to produce her work and draws on a myth that is well known in all cultures: the myth of the magical bird that can rise from the ashes, the Phoenix. In Western societies, the phoenix was popularised in the late twentieth and early twenty first century by JK Rowling in her Harry Potter series. In Japan the Phoenix is the firebird, and Hiromi recalls as a child reading Tezuka, and his manga series Bird of Fire Hi no Tori 火の鳥. Tezuka is most known for his Manga series Astro Boy, Bird of Fire was not completed before his death and has not reached the popularity of Astro Boy. Bird of Fire is about immortality and Hiromi’s painting of the Firebird is a reminder to her, and the audience, that even in death there is something that remains which is not lost; even if it just a memory.

As Hiromi and I spoke about what influenced this exhibition, it became evident that Hiromi is like the plant that has been grafted, the root stock remains Japanese, the scion what we see, a hardy strong Australian woman. Being in Australia has enabled her to loosen the constraints of Japanese culture and yet take strength to grow and produce very powerful work—which is often why we use grafted plants. The works in this show are delicate and beautiful, yet they are very strong. Hiromi has been very strong in the past year as she has struggled with Long Covid and loss, and she hopes that her strength as expressed through her art can give everyone else the strength to feel some of the emotions we have all had to deal with during a tumultuous few years.

HIROMI TANGO, HANAMIDA 花涙 (FLOWER TEARS), 23 FEB – 18 MAR 2023, S+S SYDNEY

EMAIL ART@SULLIVANSTRUMPF.COM TO REQUEST A PREVIEW