Artist
Mari Ornella
Ornella Mari is a Belgian-born, Hungarian-Italian photographer based in Budapest. She began working with photography in 2017 to explore her identity – particularly in terms of her relationship to femininity and womanhood. Mari’s work focuses on young women grappling with societal pressures, tackling themes such as trauma, emotion, gender inequality, and the unrealistic expectations to which women are often subjected.
Wanna be my lover?
The Wanna be my lover? project is about self-discovery, and the search for a stable, certain identity. For the series, Mari experiments by examining herself in different roles and situations as a woman, revisiting her memories to understand how past experiences have shaped her. The project incorporates both utopian and dystopian elements to create a commentary on her own experiences, as well as on the broader social expectations placed on women throughout society – be it by parents, friends or peers. Where expectations are imposed on individuals from a young age, these pressures can either be embraced or rejected. For Mari, the purpose of the project is to reconfigure her relationship to the things that are expected of her – incorporating some into her own identity, and rejecting others without any accompanying trauma.
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.