INTERVIEW WITH TAMARYNE ON HER CURATION OF “TOMORROW IS LISTENING”

18 JULY 2026

1. In your opening speech you describe listening as “a deep human social and cultural act.” How did this idea become the foundation for Tomorrow is Listening, and why did it resonate with you as a curator?

Often when one encounters art or spends time in a gallery, viewing becomes the first most activity, experiencing the second. Rarely, does one take a moment to pause and listen to what the artworks tell us without the imposition of ourselves. Deep Listening takes time, and when you think of a conversation with a loved one or a story told by a grandparent, it becomes the most memorable. For those stories to be told or retold, someone must listen. With my background as an anthropologist, listening as a social activity through oral storytelling or creative practices later becomes a cultural act. It is how traditions, heritage and cultural memories are sustained and is embodied in the things we symbolically attach it to. Anthropology teaches us that cultures are not simply inherited but continually made over time and through these somatic modes of attention.

This being my first curatorial exhibition, I began thinking about this exhibition in the same way as an anthropologist conducting an ethnography would. Not simply as a space where artworks are seen, but where they can be listened to, to breathe and to bring with it their own memories into the conversations to be had. The central questions that I kept coming back to for “Tomorrow is Listening’ is; What will we leave behind for those who encounter it? Who does the remembering? Would they have truly listened to the people, places, stories and experiences that shaped us before they inherit it? Being human is a nuanced and complex set of memories, and even though it can be malleable it is a privilege to witness it being formed in the present. Which is why how the past is remembered will inform our reality.

If we think about the practice of art as meditative and then the receiving of the artist work, we do not even have to know art history or its terminology to have been drawn into it and develop an attachment. I think this is because we have a subconscious understanding and curiosity that has been opened by something familiar, by a memory or feeling that continues to linger in metaphorical conversation that has emerged from spending time at an exhibition. If something captures you from this curated body of work, consider if it is worth listening to how you can hold space for its tomorrow.

2. You speak about artworks as living archives that carry stories across generations. How did you select the artists for this exhibition, and what conversations or qualities were you looking for in their work?

“No one ever told me you could mourn someone who never took up space on earth. […]. I, too, have been visited by the untamed thought: ‘you have been dead long enough, it’s time to come back’. But I have never heard the public chorus’s name, the well of sorrow that you sink, when you begin to want to create someone who will not come.” – excerpt by Shari Daya

With this quote in mind, I thought about what inheritance means and what it can look like today. And since memories can fade, be fragile, fragmented, blurred or obscured by perceptions of reality and time, I wanted to move away from capturing it to finding artists who play with this idea, reproduce it and completely deconstruct or reinterpret what a memory can look like. The considered artists whose creative practice follows this idea of liminal temporalities or who use nostalgia, memory, time and states of being as themes to their work is what I was aiming for with this exhibition. These artists share in the belief that art as a way of cultural production can be recognised within the present tense, where value is created and positioned through our negotiating and collecting of everyday memories. It is a visual record of what we believe matters and what we would like others to inherit.

It is a powerful thing to be able to create art knowing the responsibility of it being birthed into a life that you may not have anticipated and then witnessed in a space outside of its conception. In this, the artworks move beyond object to reclaim its position as the storyteller, the living archive, the memory waiting to be experienced, interpreted and then inherited by others. The participating artists created work that fits this quite beautifully, bringing with it their own conceptualisations of the theme. The artists I have chosen all have their own histories, artistic mediums and narratives that they bring along, which is why choosing a diverse range of artists from varying backgrounds and paths gives this exhibition refreshed perspectives and something deeper to encounter. I wanted to create an exhibition that could also create enough space for these many narratives to exist together and speak to each other.

3. Rust-en-Vrede is both a contemporary gallery and a heritage site. In what ways did the history and atmosphere of the building shape your curatorial approach?

I often wonder, do memories fade when they have nothing to attach to? The act of memory-keeping forms a shared bond when we inherit spaces, ideas, thoughts and even time from those who came before. This is one way of reconceptualising both inheritance and an oral history for us in the here and now. With Rust-en-Vrede as both a declared heritage site with its own contested past and now a contemporary gallery, the interplay between boundaries of past and future shares an acute awareness for the flow of time that can either haunt or challenge. Rust-en-Vrede to me feels like a liminal space. One of transition between heritage that can hold past memories, while also making space for new one’s with its contemporary reflection, creating from the experiences of before and reproducing it in a new form.

This lended itself quite well to the theme of memory and “Listening” because as we take time to pause, reflect, observe, appreciate and question all that came before, we can carry those pieces into the present to not only inform our future but to consider what kind of future we would be creating. Thus, it is not meant to be a reproduction of the past, nostalgia or an homage. Rather it is to rethink our relationship with time in these historical spaces and redefine the material relationships that wishes to attach itself to our sense of belonging.

4. One of the exhibition’s central questions asks, “How will your present be remembered when experienced as a distant memory?” Has curating this exhibition changed the way you think about your own memories, legacy, or the things you choose to preserve?

It has. Curating “Tomorrow is Listening” has solidified my understanding of the importance of memory, making me more attentive to the ordinary moments and the everyday nuances that are rarely given attention.  Storytelling and acts of memory-keeping like making, remembering through photograph’s, passed down heirlooms, scrapbooking, rituals we repeat and then the symbolic processes that shape this aspect of identity through caring, preservation, mending, restoring or creating, has always been a point of fascination for me. It continues to remind me of our integral need to belong, care for, love and honour the experiences we share in, objects we hold and what we create. Through this I believe one’s legacy lives on, woven with the that which is overlooked as part of the larger social and cultural memory; ensuring that a tomorrow is possible.

Legacy to me is a practice of our conscious awareness to decide what is important or significant in our own lives and experiences before history determines what should be relevant. From my own identity as a woman of colour where so much of my own history has been systematically erased, I see the implications of loss, communities fractured and a culture distorted. With the pieces held in our hands, there is hope in rebuilding and growing these parts of history with the memories we share, collect, pass on and preserve as a form of socio-cultural inheritance. So the question is why can’t that which was once overlooked be recognised as significant today, rather than retrospectively over the passage of time? In this, I choose to assign value to my own memories in which returning means that I have lived, belonged and cared for the sacredness of time. Recognising this is a symbolic legacy that means more than the superficiality or monetary aspect we associate with inheritance, because that too fades.

Being my first curated exhibition, the experience has been memorable and allowed me to think more deeply about the ways in which we engage with each other, spaces and objects. With traces of our lives being left behind, there is a conversation to be had about what it is that we truly inherit. Especially when considering the afterlife of objects, and where it goes in the absence of human attachment. If I think about hindsight or even grief, I have come to realise how fragile memories truly are, often assuming that they will always remain vivid. Soto think differently about those moments that shape us and the memories we engage with, it occupies the space of a living archive. One doesn’t have to wrestle with holding onto the inevitable quicksand of trying to remember. The familiar can still be used as part of the impression where someone in the future will hopefully feel connected to. Our history does not only survive after death, but rather it resonates with the story that wants to be heard, rather than fabricated. It takes the courage to recognise that it is worth saving now.

5. As your curatorial debut, what has surprised you most about the process of bringing Tomorrow is Listening together, and what do you hope visitors will still be thinking about after they leave the exhibition?

A mirror is often held up to existing power structures and social critiques, but not many consider how art is a participatory process between curator, artist, viewer with art and the space in which it hangs. Sometimes one does not need all the answers but begin to ask better questions so that it can be less about speaking for the artworks and instead sharing its intrinsic voice. It is realising that curating is learning to trust the uncertainty that creates the conditions for a strong exhibition narrative where conversations can be held, rather than shaping a predetermined narrative. What I have discovered Is that we all curate our own lives with the intent that someone will one day see the moments that make us human.

What surprised me most was the impact an exhibition can have on those visiting the space. So somewhere in the curating process, I stopped asking “What do I want people to see” and started thinking about “what is it that they can experience while viewing the exhibition and what can they carry with them when they leave.

As visitors move through the exhibition “Tomorrow is Listening”, I invite them to ask not only what these works remember, but also what they awaken within their own memories. What will be left behind for the recollection of future generations. Is it in the way we choose to live, to mourn, the relationships we nurture or the material things we create and give life to. This is not an easy task, but nor should it be something reserved for the end of life. More than anything, I hope that there will be a renewed attentiveness to their own lives and a sensitivity towards the encounters with others and things. To notice the objects or art that they pass every day and how history can unfold in the mundane, inside our home, within the art and memories we make.

If inheritance is in the now and if tomorrow is listening … then what will it hear in the stories we preserve today? Will we too leave behind something worth listening to?