Who is the Boss here?

Exhibition at the Kulturmagazin Lothringen takes a closer look at the Nazi past of Hugo Boss

Gerthe. What has the firm Hugo Boss got to do with art? At the moment unwillingly rather a lot. For the artist Tanya Ury, who was born in London and has lived in Cologne since 1993, makes this connection in her current exhibition. The historical context on which the exhibited works are based and that should be known to understand the these, is also for personal reasons of the essence for her.
Ury comes from a German-Jewish family, her parents fled to London from the Nazis. "My artistic work concerns itself mainly with the subject Holocaust", Ury states. She came to Germany 13 years ago, because of the great interest in her work here.

Nazi Past

With the present exhibition "Who's Boss" she remembers the Nazi-polluted past of the Metzingen business, that tailored National Socialist uniforms and occupied a team of 150 forced labour. In a large format photograph she combines a Boss perfume ad, advertising "the darker side of Hugo". An article informs in detail of this "darker side", that is to say the Nazi past.
In digital photo collages Ury combines 3 elements. Next to Boss ads from past winter collections that present leather coats in German air force-style, she poses naked in an original Nazi air force coat. Spanish postcards from the Franco era that in naïve manner display doll-like girls and soldier boys, serve as the third component.
Apart from Ury's photos a video and a clothing object are to be seen. The Boss logo itself is also alienated by her in that the "ss" is replace by the SS rune. Her exactingly researched work aims to provoke and inform.
And it poses the question how much Nazi potential continues to have an effect going unnoticed, why it is that a large industrial business concern can't openly deal with its past and how being in uniform finds its expression in daily life.
herb Ruhr Nachrichten (News) 3.11.2006

(English translation by Tanya Ury)