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All that is mine. Body and psyche in the work of five Hungarian artists

 

 

 

 

All that is mine. Body and psyche in the work of five Hungarian artists

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The online presentation All that is mine focuses on the work of five Hungarian artists of different generations: Katalin Ladik, Zsuzsi Ujj, Andrea Éva Győri, Kata Tranker and Nikolett Balázs. Selected with curator Róna Kopeczky and realised in cooperation with acb Gallery and Viltin Gallery, Budapest.

Through specifically ‘female’ imageries, metaphors, symbols as well as a variety of media ranging from performance and photography to drawing and installation, the works presented deal with instincts, feelings, pleasure and pain, life and death, and voice the complexity of existing in a woman’s body. Being a woman artist in Central Europe is complex. Not only are artists from the region generally underrepresented on the international scene, the patriarchal burden and mental charges that weigh on women’s bodily and social existence very often challenge the quality of the time they can dedicate to creation. A recent, but much delayed, recognition of female artists in this region is fortunately in progress, opening up a greater landscape of artistic positions that are often heavily invested in form and experimentation, and exist beyond the fact of the artists’ gender.

 

 

 

This presentation focuses on two strands within the practices of these artists: Liberation of the Image, and Liberation of the Body.

 

Liberation of the image: As respectively determining figures of the neo-avant-garde scene that developed an intermedia practice employing new artistic forms such as performance, conceptual photography, or visual poetry, and of the underground cultural, artistic and music circles of the eighties in Hungary, Katalin Ladik and Zsuzsi Ujj have been using their own body both as a thematic and as a medium in performances and photographic series. Smashing the traditional image of artworks depicting women and their representation as passive models, muses subject of and subjected to the male gaze, the artists (re)appropriate their body through playful, ironic, sarcastic or subversive actions challenging societal expectations (Katalin Ladik), or alternating stereotypical female roles such as the bride, the witch or the mother in a macabre role play (Zsuzsi Ujj).

 

Liberation of the body: The younger generation processes experiences related to their own bodily sensations, representations of sexual pleasure, of physical pain, of motherhood and the instincts it awakens, as well the search for balance between their artistic identity and womanhood as they live it. Expressive drawings unveiling the connection between the body and the psyche (Andrea Éva Győri), abstract compositions made of recycled materials that highlight our sensual relation to the material and to others (Nikolett Balázs), or fragile objects and subtle reliefs of mythological and archaeological references that bear existential meanings and investigate women’s intimate connection with art (Kata Tranker). These voices tell the stories of lovers, mothers, humans, animals, thinkers, feelers, and of artists who fight fiercely for and occupy their space of creation.

Róna Kopeczky

 

Further Reading

 

Nikolett Balázs

Nikolett Balázs

Nikolett Balázs (b. 1990) creates artworks that redefine classic artistic techniques and rethink materials of our surroundings. Often originated from peripheral environments, she drags found objects and poor materials from their milieu, and elevates them to the status of an artwork through a process of recycling that questions their values and interpretation. The rusty wire bundle, industrial foam and waste wood integrate with the canvas, oil paint, and gypsum in one composition.

 

For Balázs, creating an artwork is a metamorphosis of texture and colour, an experiment of scale and tension, as well as the investigation of our philosophical, ordinary, social and personal relationship with the material. The artist folds, cuts, untwists, guts, sews, glues, forms, paints and constantly transforms the contexts of raw material. The playful, sensual, social and aesthetic aspects of fine art are essential elements of Balázs’ practice, balancing on the border of abstraction and figuration, her work conveys a sense of female sensitivity, sensuality and bodily experience.

 

 

 

 

Andrea Éva Győri

Andrea Éva Győri

Andrea Éva Győri (b. 1985) graduated in painting from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. Although painting still prevails in her oeuvre, she has developed a multimedia approach and a collaborative artistic practice, that has gained more and more emphasis as her art has matured over the years and in the course of further education and residencies in Stuttgart, South Korea and Maastricht. Győri’s artistic interest revolves around the connection between the body and the psyche, seen as a reaction to personal development and social phenomena, but also explores sexuality and satisfaction as forms of self-care, as well as partnerships and the power relations that they generate.

 

Her intimate, process-based and often performative works, focused on the human body and mind, are developed in an atmosphere of absolute trust and honesty and unfold through the media of drawing, video performance and sculpture. Győri lives and works in Rotterdam. She exhibited as part of Manifesta 11, in Zürich in 2016.

 

 

 

 

Katalin Ladik

Katalin Ladik

Katalin Ladik (b. 1942) is a Hungarian poet, actress and performance artist, one of the most prominent representatives of experimental art in former Yugoslavia and Hungary and one of the most influential female artists of the last decades. She studied theatre at the Drama Studio in Novi Sad in 1964–1966 and started her literary career in 1962 while working as a bank assistant. From 1963 to 1977 she worked at Radio Novi Sad and joined the Novi Sad Theatre in 1972. She extended her acting activity to cinema and television, also acting as the editor of poetry in Hungarian literary magazines.

 

Ladik moved to Budapest in 1992 and in the last 20 years she has lived and worked alternately in Novi Sad, Budapest and Hvar Island. Parallel to her written poems the artist also engages in sound poetry and visual poetry, experimental music and audio plays, actions, performances, mail art and collage. She has been performing and exhibiting her work at prominent international venues and art events including documenta 14 in 2017. Katalin Ladik received numerous awards, such as the Kassák Lajos Award (1991), the Mediawave Parallel Culture Award (2003), the National Award for Culture of the Republic of Serbia (2009), the Laurel Wreath Award of Hungary (2012) and the prestigious Lennon Ono Grant for Peace in 2016, together with Olafur Eliasson, Anish Kapoor and Ai Weiwei.

 

 

 

 

Kata Tranker

Kata Tranker

Kata Tranker (b. 1989) studied painting at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts and media design at the Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften in Hamburg. Her installations built from small elements, carefully shaped objects and detailed, delicate collages investigate the eternal questions of the individual and society, and the existentialist problems of the subject. She realizes conceptual installations with cheap, ephemeral materials, while also boldly experimenting with different techniques. Paper and wood are the recurring elements of her works, and she likes to complete them with found objects, books, everyday tools and archival photos. Balancing between plane and space, her compositions give an impression of fragility, vulnerability and relativity.

 

While Tranker’s art is characterized by a personal tone that revolves around the concepts of identity search, self-reflection and intimacy, her works based on free associations express the universal truths and principles of knowledge and cognition.

 

 

 

 

Zsuzsi Ujj

Zsuzsi Ujj

Zsuzsi Ujj (b. 1959) is a photographer, performer, poet, songwriter, singer and a unique figure of Hungarian underground culture. In the set photographs (photo performances) she took between 1985 and 1991, the artist uses her own, often painted body, to express a peculiar female and human life experience. Her distorted approach to stereotypical female roles deals with the cultural representation of gender and the relationship between power, sexuality, violence and death. Her poems and melancholic-ironic lyrics create a visual repertoire that equals her photographs and – resulting from her work at the Béla Balázs Studio, the most important forum for experimental filmmaking in the late eighties – often have a cinematic effect. Her first exhibitions at Liget Gallery (1987-1989) were accompanied by concerts, creating an unparalleled unity of image and text. Since 1991, Zsuzsi Ujj has been the singer of the Csókolom band and also performs in duo with composer-pianist Kristóf Darvas.

 

The discovery of her work began in the late 2000s, resulting in her participation in prestigious international exhibitions such as “Gender Check” at MUMOK Vienna (2011) and “Bigger Splash: Painting after Performance Art” at Tate Modern (2012).

 

 

 

 

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All that is mine. Body and psyche in the work of five Hungarian artists