Tromarama

ROH is pleased to present MOTHERTHUMB by Tromarama, a collective that consists of Febie Babyrose, Ruddy Hatumena, and Herbert Hans. They were first acquainted together as a collective by making meticulously constructed stop-motion videos that would oftentimes appear playful on the surface and yet touch upon the very fundamental notions of humanity through the personification, or animation, of otherwise static objects. The practice of Tromarama has developed organically to expand further within moving image itself and beyond thereafter, to include more complex object-based installations and as well as ...

The title of this site-specific project, MOTHERTHUMB, is also a repeated offset lithographic print that encapsulates the three walls of the presentation space, depicting the artists’ thumbprints in purple ink. This marking is usually found throughout a number of various documents as a way to verify the authenticity of the parties it pertains to, as well as to verify a person’s vote in political elections.

MOTHERTHUMB attempts to synthesize languages as well as gestures of transactions that occur constantly in flux through social media, which in and of itself acts as a contemporary model for economy which arose post-internet, obliterating the divisions between play and transaction, as well as rest and production. Social media not only utilizes its users for the purpose of unconscious free labor, but also as devices to produce new forms of voluntarily produced capital.

Tromarama (Formed in 2006) has participated in major exhibitions at various notable institutions worldwide. Their recent commission was Tromarama: The Lost Jungle (2021-2022) at the Children’s Art Space at Museum MACAN, Jakarta, Indonesia. Their selected solo exhibitions namely PERSONALIA, ROH, Jakarta, Indonesia (2022); Beta, DOCUMENT Space, Chicago, USA (2021); Madakaripura, Edouard Malingue Gallery, London, UK (2020); and Tromarama, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Netherlands (2015). Tromarama’s selected group exhibitions include CLOUD WALKERS at L ...