Artist
Balázs Szigligeti
Balázs Szigligeti is a Budapest-based photographer, who studied at The Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. His work explores the boundaries between reality and fantasy. With a foundation in digital post-processing techniques, he establishes a kind of dreamworld; his artworks celebrate the human body, plasticity, queer culture, his hedonistic friends and life itself.
Instagram: szigligetiphotography
G O L D E N L I P S
Creating and maintaining beauty has become more and more important to many of us. Anaplasty develops, ideal appearances change, and most people strive to meet those expectations. In my research, I became preoccupied with people who are focused on the beauty of their bodies in extraordinary ways. For me, the most interesting questions in this regard concern the transformation, conservation and loss of beauty – about ageing itself, and how we seek to hide its signs.
For the G O L D E N L I P S series, I photographed my mother's friends. They’re all above 50. They are mothers, wives or ex-wives. And they are rich – or they’re married to rich men. Staying young is the most important thing for them, and I feel that they’ll look young forever; they looked the same when I was 10. Scrolling through the party photos they upload to Facebook, I found the inspiration for my series. I called them to arrange a pyjama party photoshoot. They liked it. Laughing at or making fun of them was not my intention at all – these women are my inspiration – but I want viewers to feel the sadness of a lifestyle lived in pursuit of youth. To let them know that these women aren’t always smiling. Ageing and the marks it leaves affect their behaviour and emotions.
O N E DAY W E W I L L A L L C E L E B R AT E T O G E T H E R
I'm experimenting with creating my own garden of eden. For me, recalling the carefree lightness of childhood is a way to portray the euphoria of life. This lightness is best represented by birthdays. From the beginning, it was clear for me that cakes would play an important role in my series; birthday cakes, which celebrate life and are made to make others happy, symbolise that sense of exhilaration.
Nominated by Gabriella Csizek, curator of the permanent Capa exhibition at Capa Center, Balázs Turós’ work explores themes that emerge from his personal development and his life's journey, and the sensitive expression of these themes in series’ of photographs. We have chosen him as a FUTURES Talent for his high-quality work and consistently performed projects. A graduate of the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Turós has been awarded the József Pécsi Photography Scholarship three times.
Tamás Don, chief curator at MODEM Center for Modern and Contemporary Art, nominates Zsuzsanna Simon, a graduate of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. Since university, Simon’s series have focused on feminism and the social issues affecting women, and she has continued to work with a strong emphasis on the female body and societal expectations in her post-graduate projects too. There are few artists in the Hungarian photography scene who have been so focused on an important social issue for as long as Simon.
Nominated by Emese Mucsi, curator at Capa Center, Balázs Szigligeti brings into play the explosive, overdriven, shiny-glazed visual characteristics of camp aesthetics, where he 'cools down’ the loudness of camp, exploiting the possibilities of black-and-white image creation. Having worked in the fashion industry since the age of 16, Szigligeti makes autonomous projects which create a special tension between the topic and the way it is displayed.
Nominated by Borbála Szalai, director of Trafó Gallery, Mari Ornella makes photographs in which control and loss of control appear with equal emphasis. Her latest series, Wanna Be My Lover, deals with the search for female identity and the issues when women's self-definition is shaped by men. The project originates from personal traumas, and sees the artist focus on her own relationship with men such as her father, the characteristics of borderline personality disorder, and the consequences of uncontrollable emotional states.
Nominated by István Virágvölgyi, artistic director at Capa Center, Richárd Kiss approaches the world and the photographs that seek to represent it with a highly analytical vision, sifting through millions of images on the internet and then appropriating them for his work. Asking questions such as ‘does it make sense to take the two-millionth photo of the Eiffel Tower?’, Kiss pulls the rug out from under the online photo services we use on a daily basis.