BUDAPEST.- Celebrating its 35th anniversary, the Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art presents for the first time a selection of works from its collection exclusively by women. The first section of the two-part exhibition focuses on women’s roles and women’s (self-)representation in art, while the second section presents the genres and themes chosen by women, as well as their artistic achievements and accomplishments over the past fifty years, through their works in the museum.

The nudes painted by men, displayed on the main wall in the first hall of the exhibition space, demonstrate how the female body is represented in art through the male gaze. The role of the woman is that of the model, muse or lover, the female body is the object of sexual desire and the artistic practice (representation or action). As a counterpoint to this, Kriszta Nagy’s (Tereskova) much-cited work I am a Contemporary Painter (1998) is not only a critique of the image of women in consumer society, but also of the passive role of women in art, their objectification.

Over the last five decades, the work of women artists has revealed the stereotypes and discrimination that women have faced – and continue to face – not only in the arts, but in all aspects of life. The works presented in the first part of the exhibition thus highlight issues concerning the female body, female roles and the status of women artists in different media and genres.

In the 1970s, artists such as Orshi Drozdik, who became the most important representative of feminist criticism in Hungary, found it difficult to find their way in an institutional system traditionally dominated by men. The Medical Venus, based on a model of the artist’s body, is an example of a woman’s body at the mercy of the medical gaze. Judit Kele’s radical move to place herself in the role of the art object not only questions the position of the Eastern European woman artist, but also the value of the woman and the female body, just as the Polish artist Natalia LL criticises the sexist image of women in (consumer) society.

Katalin Ladik, as the only female member of the avant-garde group Bosch+Bosch in Vojvodina, is a passive participant in Attila Csernik’s photographs, while in her own works she actively performs, extending the medium of poetry and using the tools of mime. By distorting and deforming her face by pressing it against a sheet of glass, she tries to represent not the outer but the inner self. Performer Zsuzsi Ujjj created a series of black and white self-portraits in the 1980s, in which the abandoned and amorous woman strips her body and soul down to the bone – to the skeleton painted on her skin.

In her work, Bea Veszely appropriates famous portraits of women from the history of art and their colour photographic reproductions. She transforms the biblical, classical and Renaissance nudes, the female ideals portrayed by men, with tiny pinpricks, transforming the photographs into a fragile object, similar to needlework or lace, reclaiming them for the female gaze. In her “Witch-Hunt” series, Judit Hersko also works with engravings from art history from the 17th and 18th centuries. The scene, drawn on translucent paper by punching, melting and scratching, is cast like a shadow on the wall, reminding the viewer of a time when the most horrifying way to exclude, condemn and murder women was to accuse them of witchcraft.

Women’s social situation today, the expectations placed on them, the means of education and discipline, the pressures of the majority society are the subject of works by Eva Kotátková from the Czech Republic, LA Raeven and Jeanne van Heeswijk from the Netherlands, KOJA from Albania, and Ilona Németh, a Hungarian national from Slovakia. In Kotátková’s installation, wooden structures built around the children force them into the ‘proper’ physical position expected at school, while in LA Raeven’s video, the ballet students have already embraced the external expectations imposed on them about their own bodies. Ilona Németh’s gynaecological chairs evoke images of women’s illnesses, pregnancy, sexuality or female vulnerability through the use of velvet, rabbit hair and moss as coverings, while KOJA’s video mocks a local tradition still existing in rural Kosovo, the display of a bloody sheet as proof of the bride’s virginity.

In a series of interviews conducted in Budapest in 2004, Jeanne van Heeswijk interviewed women representing the seven feminine qualities (poetic, critical, philosophical, caring, light-foot, organised, thoughtful) about their professions (poet, art writer, dancer, philosopher, maid, secretary and museum attendant), revealing the figure of the autonomous and successful woman of today, who is also confronted with many obstacles.

In their joint work (Near Hajnal, Beside Balázs), Balázs Beöthy and Hajnal Németh focus on male-female roles, the male and female body and the ironic play with them. In her own videos, Hajnal Németh also takes on different roles and questions these roles: Does a woman have to undress to get noticed (to get into the museum)? What is a woman doing in a men’s room? What lies behind the deceptive surface (the seductive make-up, wig, clothing)? In her computer graphics, Olga Tobleruts dresses antique sculptures in colourful costumes with logos of famous fashion brands, transforming the beauty ideals of men and women of the past into models of today, touching on the themes of changing tastes and artistic academism.

The “naked” reality is presented in Katarzyna Kozyra’s six-channel video installation, which at the time (1997) made quite a splash in the Hungarian gutter press. Using hidden camera footage in Budapest’s baths, Kozyra investigated whether the behaviour of women and men changes in a gender-free environment. In Women’s Bathhouse, we see women relaxing, resting and cleansing themselves in a natural, uninhibited way, without any embellishment or idealisation, which goes against the social expectations of the ideal of the perfect female body and may therefore seem scandalous to some. At the same time, the scenes in the women’s bathhouse recall the celebrated art historical antecedents of Ingres, Rubens and Degas’ paintings of bathers, to which the artist herself refers in the opening image, Ingres’ painting The Turkish Bath, thus placing the video footage in the sphere of fine arts and historical tradition. Images of ageing, of the deterioration of the body, appear in the work of Zuzanna Janin, also from Poland, who has put together a series of photographs of bodies of different ages, in space and time, condensing personal time, the life of a woman, from childhood to old age, into a single work. All of the works reflect the particular perspective and sensibility with which the women artists approach their subjects, expressing their own experiences, desires and feelings through the works.

EXHIBITING ARTISTS

Lourdes CASTRO, Orshi DROZDIK, Jeanne van HEESWIJK, Judit HERSKO, Zuzanna JANIN, Judit KELE, KOJA (Fitore ISUFI SHUKRIU), Eva KOT'ÁTKOVÁ, Katarzyna KOZYRA, Natalia LL, Katalin LADIK, Kriszta NAGY, Hajnal NÉMETH, Ilona NÉMETH, Florentina PAKOSTA, L.A. RAEVEN, Olga TOBRELUTS, Zsuzsi UJJ, Beáta VESZELY

CURATOR

Krisztina SZIPŐCS