Zsófia Szemző
Bereich: Medienkunst, Zeichnung
Key Facts
Nationalität
UngarnBereich
Medienkunst, ZeichnungWohnort
BudapestEmpfehlende Institution
tranzit.org/ERSTE StiftungZeitraum
August 2017 - August 2017Zsófia Szemző is living and working in Budapest and lived in Paris 2008-2012. She his investigating ways of storytelling, researching different ways of narration in human interaction. Her projects evolve mostly from drawings. In her doctoral studies she is researching ways of engaging the public in participatory practice. “Szemző's cargo is social science, fiction, criticism, and in a particular mix, which transforms science into magic." Judit Csatlós. In 2017 she made drawings for the Cooperative city, in 2016 she participated in The Measure of our Traveling Feet in Marres, House for Contemporary Culture, Maastricht, Rain come down! In z2o Sarah Zanin gallery in Rome, and 585,000 m2, a group exhibition in WhiteBox gallery, New York. In 2015 she took part in Eos’s children on the Beaufort scale, Performance as part of Modus Operandi, Off Biennale, Budapest. In 2014 she founded Co-op with Judit Csatlós and Daniela Krajcova as part of the Slightly tinted in FKSE and worked on a solo exhibit Forgetting continents, on the theme of sustainability. In 2013 she participated in Hidden visions exhibition, in 2012 she received a travel grant to New York with the bursary of the Budai György Foundation & Alma on Dobbin center, she went to Ano Lino workshop at Banska Stanica art center, Banska Stiavnica, Slovakia, participated in the workshop, Curator’s Lab, with CosntrucLab/Exyzt, ASAfactory, Guimaraes, Portugal. In 2011 she had two solo exhibits: Something is missing in Liget gallery, Feint Real-estate Agency in Inda Gallery Budapest and contributed to the Subjective Atlas of Hungary workshop Kitchen Budapest HVG books. She studied 2003–2008 at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest and 2008–2009 ENSCI, Paris Mastère Spécialisé en Création et Technologie Contemporain, with the bursary of the French State. In 2013 she started her doctoral studies at the University of Fine Arts, Budapest.
<link http: zsofiaszemzo.com _blank>zsofiaszemzo.com
I would like to work on a series of drawings and ceramics and videos, that will depict the river Danube, and it's water regulation and possibilities what if it would have run elsewhere? I am aware that the distance between Vienna and Budapest is relatively small, but this distance is changing constantly in all other senses, thru out history and even so now. I would like to travel to Vienna by boat, if i can. I would like to measure this distance in my mind and test these changes in real life. If possible i would like to find a family that would adopt me for a week, to learn from them. I would like to discover stories of escape on the river. Stories of the river under ice. Stories of in what case people decided to move to Vienna from elsewhere and for what reason?
For the time being, parallel to this Wien based Danube examination, i would like to focus on working on my current project a series of mostly drawings, and photographs and installations, porcelain ond clay objects. I will continue to process data and phenomena that deal with side effects of human actions, and possibilities of mending broken situations, as for example a rabbit species that were introduced in New Zealand, which have no natural enemies there, so they have run wild and eroded the local vegetation.
I will collect these spoilt situations and also successful human solutions, where humans fix broken things by tinkering, such as when we mend a broken chair by instead putting in a leg, we apply a walking cane, or when we apply a rubber band on our pants when we have a torn button. I will show the contradiction that is present between the ideal situation imagined by man, and the modalities of implementation of these ideas. From river engineering to hair-dyeing, from blockflat neighbourhoods to orthopaedic shoes, from divided areas of cities, to changing borders of countries.
I see the Kintsugi technique, from Japan, as a powerful predecessor to my aim, where broken objects are mended with gold, so the fact that they have been broken gives them even more value, it indicates that they are present since a longer period of time, and have overcome misfortune, have become more, not less.