‘All that is mine’: 5 female Hungarian artists on the sexual liberation of body and mind

A new online exhibition is celebrating five female Hungarian artists and their fight for physical and psychic liberation.

Hosted by the London-based gallery Arcadia Missa, All that is mine. Body and psyche in the work of five Hungarian artists features creators from different generations, including Nikolett Balázs, Andrea Éva Győri, Katalin Ladik, Kata Tranker, and Zsuzsi Ujj. It showcases work produced between the late 1970s all the way to 2021, ranging across performance art, drawing, sculpture, and photography.

Among the highlights is Study for Bridal I, a 1986 artwork by Zsuzsi Ujj. The piece is a daring, eerie self-portrait of the photographer, singer, and poet, who has been a key figure of the Hungarian underground since the mid-1980s. It depicts the artist sitting on all fours on top of a male suit, her body covered in thick brushes of black paint. “Not only does the work aesthetically carry a haunting timelessness, but it operates on many levels — as perhaps a commentary of the idea of becoming a bride as a death of self, but also as an interdisciplinary take, making the Study for Bridal I also tap into the field of painting and performance art,” co-curator Rózsa Farkas told The Calvert Journal.

The online show also features Ingredients by Nikolett Balázs, a Budapest-based artist born in 1990 who incorporates discarded materials into her practice. Round like the moon, Ingredients is made half from soil, and half from blood-stained cloth and metal shavings. For co-curator Róna Kopeczky, the work reflects the “dualities that shape the artist’s identity as a young woman: coming from a rural area from eastern Hungary, while living and working in a busy urban environment, accepting and exploring the wide scale between sterility and dirtiness.”

Check out the show here for free.