Zeitschrift für KulturAustausch Nr.04/04 (Periodical for Cultural Exchange)

Thorn in the side
(With image of Art Prize No. 4)

Interview with Tanya Ury

Tanya Ury, who was born in London in 1951, has been living in Cologne since 1993. Her art throws light on how, under the surface of every day culture in Germany, traces of National Socialism have been carried forward. In her most recent work that can be seen from January the 28th 2005, in the ifa Gallery, Linienstraße 139/140, Berlin, in an exhibition entitled "Stets gern für Sie beschäftigt..." ("Always glad to be of service…"), together with artists like Yael Katz Ben Shalom and Uriel Orlow, she makes the Nazi past of the Hugo Boss Company that employed Forced Labourers in its Metzingen production workshops, her central theme.

Zeitschrift für KulturAustauch: Ms. Ury, in your works you alienate the Hugo Boss advertising posters. How does that appear when you take a closer look?
Tanya Ury: There are two kinds of alienation - firstly of the latest advertising campaign "Your fragrance your rules". One sees a young man holding his hand up to the camera to show his palm onto which "Your Rules" has been written. My artwork has two parts, which I bring together digitally: this newest advertisement and then my own hand into which I sew the word "Boss". Then there is "Fashion Victim"; I bring two different elements together there also: an ad for the men's cologne "Dark Blue" with the logo "The darker side of Hugo", in which a man gazes out of the picture with quite a "satanic" expression; I brought that together digitally with an article on the history of Boss. Here you see uniforms too. "The darker side of Hugo" - whether it was deliberately done or not, the slogan is terribly cynical. A gallery owner I know was rather outraged when he saw this work and asked: "What do you want? Are you taking some kind of revenge?" It's not about taking revenge - it's about reappraisal. I come from a Jewish German family who suffered greatly at the time of the Third Reich - unsurprisingly, so did the following generations - it doesn't just "go away".

KulturAustauch: In Germany more than ever, there has been intensive reappraisal and debate on the history going on for quite a while now - what do you still hope to achieve?
Ury: One should never stop remembering! At the end of the war everything was swept under the carpet, in particular the involvement of industry. People, who had been part of the Nazi machinery, just carried on working. Much of this is only just becoming apparent. I see it as my obligation to be "a thorn in the side" on these issues. The Boss work is concerned with the fact that nobody is aware how the fashion industry made uniforms with the employment of forced labourers - who didn't receive compensation later. In December 2004 I took part in a protest action against the Flick Collection. Hugo Boss engaged "only" 150 forced labourers, while in the Flick arms industry it was 50.000! Christian Friedrich Flick, the grandson, attempts to "make good" in his own particular way by lending his art collection (to the Berlin state) for seven years - it is not a gift. And the former forced labourers don't see any of this money.

KulturAustauch: In some of your staging you make use of German mythology: the Loreley, Schuberts Heideröslein. What does this saga heritage mean to you?
Ury: I grew up with these things - though we lived in Great Britain. My father was a composer and music critic; we listened to German music regularly - and we also took trips to the Loreley…

KulturAustauch: You like to stage your art in a trashy way…
Ury: Of course, it is absolute kitsch! But it's accepted more over here than in England. That really surprised me. I'm producing some T-shirts at the moment for the artwork "Boss Rune", on which the double "S" in the Boss logo is replaced by the SS Symbol. The people in the copy shop where I am having the T-shirts made were very friendly, when I discussed all the details. But when I left I thought: "Nobody said anything against the motif, and actually it's forbidden". I'm advertising it on my website already. I wonder whether I will get any orders - and if so from whom?

Interview Amin Farzanefar (English translation Tanya Ury)