24 Sep 2014

Ilona Németh: Revised Version at tranzit, Bratislava

For our first solo-exhibition in the new location we invited Ilona Németh*, one of the leading woman artists from Slovakia. Revised Version presents new works, which focus on the interpretation of history, seen in a nexus of personal experience, memory and recollection, cultural and national identity, politics and ideology.

It is not some sort of nostalgia for the 19th century ideal of artistic freedom that leads Ilona Németh to experience the relationship between art and politics as a conflict. Assuming social responsibility, as well as the necessity for making a stand and expressing one's opinions, are central to her value system. What she is irritated by is the defencelessness of artistic intention/artwork against so-called adhocism, which effects artists who engage in social and political themes.

In order to deal with this conflict, Ilona Németh involves family stories and private histories and resorts to a method of 'personal archaeology'. She reaches back to one of the most defining experiences of her own childhood: the regular Sunday conversations that took place between her father and uncle, two left-wing intellectuals. As it becomes clear from the video interview conducted with Rezső Szabó, the artist's maternal uncle, in those days each of the two men perceived different aspects of communism from his own perspective. Ilona Németh could not identify with her father, who in spite of his pluralistic views, remained dedicated to communism, or her uncle, who stood fully behind the cause of the Hungarian minority, but had a monolithic, hierarchical manner of thinking. With the rejection of these male role models, however, came the possibility of finding her own path, built on her identity as a woman, a concerned citizen and an artist – and with it the compulsion to grapple with a sense of conflicting responsibilities to herself and to others.

The artist's deceased father, Jenő Németh, is present through the objects that are connected to him. In the photo, which depicts him accompanied by a delegation as they arrive at the opening of the flower exhibition Flora Bratislava (cca. 1971). Here a life enclosed in conventions and the principle of the centralized system (the leader and his 'entourage') are manifest at the level of representation. Reference to hierarchic structures also appears in another work showcased at the exhibition, in the video consisting of a montage of archive film material showing a ship and barge, to which the uncle compares himself, an example of responsibility and obligation, and a general leadership model.

While the videos are grounded in principles of narrative and representation, the dramatic presence of the motion detector controlled table – which opens and closes from time to time – refers to the mechanisms of history, and the sepulchral remnant, as an object of family heritage that has finally been put to use, offers a mute presence.

Ilona Németh creates a space in which the elements are connected one to another in multiple ways, as are the content aspects of the works, which are linked in a network-like fashion, and whose points of intersection give rise to different – sometimes contradictory – directions. Depending on age, social position, political standpoint and cultural background, visitors may arrive at radically different readings. There are, however, lessons to be learned from the instances of confrontation between individual paths and history.

In returning to the visual memory that prompted the idea of the exhibition – the triangle of the young girl and two adult men – it can be said that it is a now mature, adult artist who has managed to alter the basic position: the 'discussion' takes place in a space that is not rigidly confined, but open and network-like. While the exhibition provides no solutions for dissolving the tension between individual and collective – artistic versus civic – responsibility, it nevertheless offers some perspectives and creates a condition of equality between positions of debate.


* Ilona Németh was born in 1963 in Dunajská Streda, Slovakia. She lives and works in Bratislava and Dunajská Streda, Slovakia.

While in the nineties her work concentrated mostly on body politics, installation art and visual pregnancy, starting in the early 2000s she turned to public art and socially engaged work. The question of identity, the relationship between private history, politics and ideology, issues of the public space and a contextual approach are the main characteristics of her art up to the present.

In 2001 Ilona Németh exhibited Invitation for a Visit in the Pavilion of the Czech and Slovak Republic at the Venice Biennial (with Jiří Surůvka) and she participated in editions of the Prague Biennale (2005, 2007, 2011). Recent exhibitions include: Private Nationalism SK, Kunsthalle, Košice (2014); Good Girls. Memory, Desire, Power, Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest (2013); The Harpoon Project. Site specific piece for New Bedford, The University Art Gallery, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, New Bedford (2013); Ilona Németh, HIT Gallery, Bratislava (2013); Out of the Museum and into the Street. Hungarian Contemporary Art after 2010, Steirischer Herbst & Pavelhaus, Laafeld (2013); Blood, Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava (2012); The Hero, the Heroine and the Author, Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest (2012); Identity of the Space, The Brno House of Arts, Brno (2012); Dilemma, Ernst Museum, Budapest (2011).

Curated by Judit Angel

Exhibition opening: September 25, 2014, at 6 pm
Exhibition duration: September 25 – October 31, 2014
Opening hours: Wednesday – Sunday, 2.00 – 7.00 pm
Location: Beskydska 12, 81105 Bratislava

Erste Foundation is main partner of tranzit.