Aug 28, 2020 // Vernissage / Tomoya Imamura: Petöfi’s Corpse

ZU GAST artist talk available on our You­Tube channel:
August 2020 // ZU GAST / Artist Talk Tomoya Ima­mu­ra and Joan­na Kischka

The series attempts to descri­be a Hun­ga­ri­an pre­sent who­se post-socia­list rea­li­ty nou­ris­hes a new form of natio­na­lism. A peo­p­le who have been opres­sed for cen­tu­ries, who­se cul­tu­re and edu­ca­ti­on has cent­red around the histo­ry of said opres­si­on is sear­ching for a new ene­my to bla­im in this new free, but unfair world.
This image series com­bi­nes docu­men­ta­ry pho­to­gra­phy and staged images, though it remains unclear how much mani­pu­la­ti­on took place in each pic­tu­re. Part of this sta­ging are paper-mâché objects, which repre­sent communist‑, as well as Hun­ga­ri­an natio­nal sym­bo­lism. They ser­ve as a white pro­jec­tion sur­face or burn­tout form. For out­si­ders, they are almost the only direct refe­rence to Hun­ga­ry, alt­hough the natio­nal sym­bo­lism depic­ted does not pro­vi­de more infor­ma­ti­on about Hun­ga­ry than the occa­sio­nal Hun­ga­ri­an-lan­guage let­te­ring. The loca­ti­on thus remains in Eas­tern Euro­pe and empha­si­zes the com­mu­nist veil that pou­red the for­mer Eas­tern bloc into uni­form concrete.
The 1kg-loaf of brea­dis a reac­cu­ring ele­ment in the series. It is a stan­dar­di­zed rem­nant of the socia­list sys­tem, but also draws a par­al­lel to the „body of christ“ and the reli­gious aspects of the right-wing-move­ment. Con­nec­ted to the work‘s title it high­lights Sán­dor Pető­fi as a natio­nal „mes­siah“, who­se death is just as unclear, as the evo­lu­ti­on of Hungary‘s his­to­ri­cal self image.

Ope­ning evening

Instal­la­ti­on photos