Artist
Kincső Bede
Kincső Bede (b. 1995) is a Romanian visual artist with Hungarian roots, who grew up in a small city in Transylvania, Romania. She is fascinated by the communist past of her homeland, the power of the leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, the control exercised by the security agency Securitate, and how this history is passed down across the generations. Currently, Kincsõ lives and works in Budapest, Hungary and she studies at the Moholy Nagy University of Art and Design. She is part of the Studio of Young Photographers.
In 2020 she won the photography scholarship of the Association of Hungarian Photographers. In the same year she was among the winners of Carte Blanche Students, a scholarship founded by Paris Photo, the world's greatest photo art fair. The works of the four winners were exhibited at the Parisian Gare du Nord. Her diploma series, entitled "Three Colours I Know in This World," was chosen for the 10 New Talent 2020 programme by the curators of BredaPhoto Festival and was exhibited in The Netherlands.
Her work is often applauded by the foreign press. Also her photos are part of the Blurring the Lines 2020 issue. From 2020 she is represented by TOBE Gallery, Budapest.
Three Colours I Know in This World
“Three Colours I Know in This World" quotes the first line of the Romanian communist anthem. A line translated into the language of photography can help to analyse and understand my artistic and personal motivation too. I didn’t choose the subject, I just tried to clarify what I am looking for behind the picture and because of that, I started to use a method. I started to play with my pictures: so I let them direct me and conduct me. This is a personal story considering the fact that communism created an enormous chasm between the generation of my parents; and that of mine. They lived through communism and they experienced the change of regime as well, but we didn’t. Therefore they know something we don’t. So here is this history I only heard of and wasn’t part of, here are all the traumas inherited from my parents – and they all come together as visions in my head and sensations I feel in my body. My personal motivation is to move closer to my parents.
Russia’s Marina Istomina and Poland’s Ada Zielińska both break from the conventions of what is known as disaster photography. After experiencing first hand the wildfires engulfing her native Siberia summer after summer, Istomina captures the crisis through a redemptive fairytale: warning us about greed, power, and
ultimately the tricksters of the woods. The daughter of a firefighter, Zielińska, too, is fascinated with fire, specifically what it means to be a witness to catas- trophe. For her ongoing series, Post-Tourism, she travelled to four places: California during the 2018-19 wildfires, Paris shortly after the 2019 Notre Dame fire, Venice during the 2019 flood, and Australia during the 2020 bushfires. The Polish artist doesn’t err on the side of caution, often playing the role of pyromaniac and using chaos and provocation as fuel in her practice.
Bogdan Shirokov trained his lens in fashion and editorial photography but has been working on what he calls a life-long personal project: looking at different facets of contemporary masculinity and queerness in Russia. For Shirokov, photography is first and foremost a type of refuge and a contemplative space for the viewer, one he physically expands with installation and sculpture.
Marat Dilman offers a glimpse into nation-building in his native Kazakhstan, from the showpiece architecture to the robots being developed at universities. As the country readies itself for grand plans and ambitious advancements, the photographer reveals the way that folklore finds itself among the nuts and bolts of futuristic constructions.
Past and present collide also in the work of Kincsõ Bede who interprets the stories passed down to her about communism. Less interested in the symbols from this time, Bede stages scenes and invents her own visual language to communicate the fears, desires, secrets, and paranoia which she inherited.