Artist
Zsuzsa Darab
Born in Miskolc in 1989, Zsuzsa Darab graduated from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest (MOME), in photography BA. In 2012, she obtained a scholarship to study painting and fine art in Denmark. In 2014, she studied at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Finland under the ERASMUS programme. In 2015, she graduated from MOME's photography MA department, then in 2016 from the design and visual arts teaching MA department. Same year, she did her photography internship in Reykjavik, Iceland. From 2017 till 2018, she was working as Jón Páll's photo assistant at SuperStudio. From 2018, she lives in Hungary and works as a destination freelance photographer. She has been a member of the Hungarian Assocation Of Young Art Photographers since 2011, and the Women Photograph database, since 2017. Her works are usually personal, conceptual, staged and also experimental. She has already exhibited several times in Budapest and abroad as well, e.g. New York, Rome, Nizhny Tagil, Luxembourg, Helsinki, Istanbul, Warsaw, etc. In 2013, she participated in the Present Continuous art project at the Mai Manó House. In 2016, she was chosen by Photo Botie as one of the 30 under 30 women photographers. She won the NKA Scholarship in 2018, 2022, 2023 and the Pécsi József Scholarship in 2021.
THIRTYSOMETHING
I want to experience the joy of loneliness. But I don’t want to feel weird because that feels good. And I don’t want to suffer in advance from the thought that if I do not do anything now to prevent this condition from becoming permanent, I will be completely alone in my old age. And meanwhile, I obviously want my own family, too, I want a real partner. But this strange situation freezes me, I’m feeling stuck...
After all, how do you find love in isolation? How did “the constant fear, the invisible enemy” rewrite dating during COVID? Wasn’t it already hard enough for people in their thirties? What are the chances for girls who did not meet the love of their life at university to find the One these days? Have all the single men wanting to start a family already taken? I feel like I keep running out of time, but is my time really running out? How realistic are these fears?”
I am looking for answers more specifically based on the experiences of myself and my friends, all in the same boat. This is a more and more serious social problem within those university graduate women who just started spreading their wings, working hard, getting out of multiple global crises. I am interested in understanding the thoughts, feelings, desires and fears of this cohort that I would illustrate with a phototherapy method I have experimented with.
My focus is on women in their thirties specifically, who might look like to live the time of their lives in the eyes of others, but actually are terribly lonely. It is important to emphasize that I am not dealing now with those who voluntarily chose the single lifestyle. I am only interested in the group of women, to which I also belong to, who feel a little lost and do not know how they got here. Those, who struggle not only with external expectations but also with their own internal pressures, but try to get out. They work hard to somehow find a loving partner eventually, so they can move on to the next phase of their lives. Those who have to deal with the “benevolent” neighbors, parents, married, same aged friends. And in the crossfire of comments and questions, they try to explain themselves shyly or while smiling, or sometimes reacting more vigorously.
I am extremely concerned about the spiritual processes, feelings, desires and fears that are expressed in these women. I am attempting to solve this very diverse problem which points to one direction, while creating a sisterhood, including myself, based on the same experiences. In recent years, I have been observing the love affairs of women in their thirties. I was curious about the solution strategies they use to live their lives and adjust in the tangled world of love.
In her long-term works, Zsuzsa Darab explores personal themes often combining conceptual and experimental solutions. Deeply engaged with the subject of observation, she presents her questions and experience as a visual story. Often, she takes her own life as a starting point in dealing with the ‘first-life panic’ of her generation and the psychological processes of coming to terms with lived experience.
Balázs Fromm’s projects unfold against the backdrop of Middle and Eastern European countries where democracies are under pressure from the threat of impending war, rising nationalism and migration. He demonstrates an interest in the human condition, which is revealed through a mix of tender portraits and impressions of direct surroundings, resulting in a palette of atmospheric images expressing the challenges of a region faced with an uncertain future.
As an active photojournalist, Noémi Napsugár Melegh is able to step away from the ‘fly on the wall’ role of an impartial author we most often expect from press photography. The atmosphere of trust that she is able to create is palpable in her images, and although she is at the beginning of her photographic career, her images show a freshness of creativity that has the potential to be seeking new experimental paths.
The exceptional characteristics of Róbert Nunkovics’ work were evident from the very beginning of his praxis: he uses the tools of documentary photography to present topics related to his interest in authentic artistic expressions, typically outsider or vernacular and rooted in street art, graffiti culture and everyday life. The focus of his sensitive multimedia projects is usually a remarkable figure or a special place with a little-known story.
Boglárka Zellei combines the spiritual journey with the creative process and her artistic practice is guided by the experience and projection of spiritual processes. With her photographic-based installation works, she invites the viewer into an intense dialogue, drawing attention to fundamental questions of faith, while also bringing to the surface themes of spiritual resilience, as well as notions of judgement and acceptance.