Finding hope: Q&A with artist Hiromi Tango

Hope is a digital projection artwork by Japanese-Australian artist Hiromi Tango that uses the facade of the UNESCO World Heritage–listed Hyde Park Barracks as its canvas.

Around 100,000 people passed through the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney during the 19th century. Originally built as a dormitory for male convicts who had been transported mainly from Britain and Ireland to serve sentences in the colony of NSW, the Barracks later became an immigration depot for unaccompanied girls and women who arrived under government-assisted immigration schemes. It also operated as an asylum for infirm or destitute women.

Tango’s work responds to the history of the Barracks as a place that provided refuge to vulnerable people, including elderly and homeless women, or those with disabilities and terminal illnesses, who were left behind by the harsh realities of colonial expansion. Accompanying the digital projection are five large-scale ‘hope flowers’ that welcome visitors through the gates, and Hope garden, a textile-based installation that will grow throughout the artwork display period (12 April – 15 June 2025).

Hiromi Tango (born 1976) immigrated to Australia in 1998 from Shikoku island, Japan, and has been a resident of Bundjalung Country, Tweed Heads, in northern NSW, since 2014. Kim Tao, Manager of Curatorial at Museums of History NSW, interviewed Tango about her practice, which explores the intersection between art and science, with a particular focus on health and mental wellbeing.

Hiromi, your work examines personal narratives and experiences of place. As an immigrant from Japan, how do you feel when you come to a place like the Hyde Park Barracks?

When I first visited the Hyde Park Barracks and encountered the incredible stories of people’s lives there, I immediately recalled the experience of visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which commemorates the stories of people whose lives were forever changed by the atomic bomb. You can’t help but respond physically to the traces of people’s lives, their feelings and experiences that are held within spaces like this. Both the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and the Hyde Park Barracks are UNESCO World Heritage Sites [the Barracks is one of 11 historic sites that together form the World Heritage–listed Australian Convict Sites]. I am so grateful as a Japanese migrant to have the opportunity to explore storytelling in this context and to contribute to the UNESCO vision of promoting lifelong learning for all to build a better future.

How have your own personal experiences of migration, displacement and anxiety informed your practice and shaped your response to the Barracks?

All my life I have lived with anxiety and art has been my refuge. Over the years, my practice as an artist has evolved through developing mindful art-making approaches that calm the mind and spirit. For many reasons, over the past seven years or so, my practice has also returned to my migrant roots – using traditional materials and art-making methods – as I have felt the distance from my home and family grow due to border closures, age and loss.

While the Barracks is more commonly associated with housing male convicts between 1819 and 1848, you have chosen to focus on the women’s phase of the site’s history between 1848 and 1887. Why did this period resonate so strongly with you?

I am always interested in how art can help to amplify the voices of those who are often left out of history. For me, the stories of people who found themselves at the Barracks because they had no other place to go really resonated strongly. There is a very strong connection with my ongoing practice, which often references the experiences of women, and uses methods and materials such as working with textiles to explore hidden histories.

For example, as a migrant who grew up in a very traditional family in regional Japan, I have often used kimono fabric in my work to explore the stories of the women in my family who rarely spoke. While I can’t change the experiences of older generations, who often lived in very difficult circumstances, I feel that I can gently share their stories of strength and resilience through art and hopefully help to change the narrative for future generations.

You have talked about how textiles embody memories and feelings, and can be tactile signifiers of home, irrespective of location. Can you tell us more about the significance of textiles in your work?

A good example is how I often use fabrics from my grandmother’s kimono, and more recently the obi (a special belt worn with kimono), in the creation of artworks including sculpture, photography and installation works.

I have very specific memories attached to garments worn by my grandmothers – of them as people, of the traditions that were handed down in my family, of the region where I grew up. There are layers of emotions – both positive and negative – associated with the materials. For example, a kimono for me both represents feelings of safety and nurturing associated with the love and care of my grandmothers, and can also be a symbol of often very poor treatment of women in traditional society.

When I work with textiles, I am thinking about the history of the material, the lives it has touched and how over generations we can reshape that narrative. Often in workshops using donated textiles I encourage participants to share their stories and think about how through refashioning the materials we are changing the narrative.

Your work is so positive, colourful, joyful and inviting – a distinct contrast to some of the more challenging narratives we explore at the Barracks. Do you think this approach offers a more accessible way to navigate difficult histories?

If you look closely enough, everyone has a story of strength and resilience. I think it is especially important, when sharing stories of vulnerable people, to start by understanding that they are inherently strong and to focus on how incredibly strong they had to be just to survive. Too often, if we start with the confronting stories of hardship and suffering, it is difficult for audiences to empathise deeply. But if we are invited into a shared space of resilience, we might generate a deeper connection.

Hope is a universal human emotion, and the concept of hope is such a powerful one, individually and collectively. What do you ‘hope’ that visitors will take away from Hope?

That even in the darkest spaces and moments, when we focus on strength and resilience we can find hope.

Hope by Hiromi Tango is on display at the Hyde Park Barracks until 15 June 2025.