ARTIST PROFILE

Eszter Szabó

  • Hungary (b. 1979 in Budapest)
  • Currently in Budapest, Hungary.
  • www.eszterszabo.hu

9 seconds

  • 2017
  • Video
  • Leaving the Testicals - thumbnail Self defence_01 - thumbnail 9 seconds - thumbnail Boycott - thumbnail Kuss die Hand - thumbnail

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    Abandoning The Testicals | 2017

I deal with the anger of everyday people and their possibilities for disobedience. My focus is on women, and on unlearning the given image of the beautiful, tame and inert victim. I am especially inspired by Hungary's current political situation, where one can observe the process in which uncritical behavior of people let paternalism, racism and nationalism to define the everyday life and get normalized in society. ‘Boycotting Meekness’ is a series of short looping animations and comic-like aquarels that depict moments when the weary and inert bodies of the ‘meek’ start to invigorate and ‘jump out of the boiling water’. They become angry and nervous. The silent routine gets disrupted as they start using muscles that they haven’t moved before and take action on their own behalf. The aim of the project is to challenge the canonized mainstream visuality of the abused victim, who is still glamorized, sexy, passive sufferer waiting to be rescued. The protagonists presented here are embellished to be ‘properly dressed’ everyday citizens but in fact they are haggard, bedraggled warriors who are trying to fight for their own interests. It is a utopian phantasmagoria of a world in which the notions of paternalism bump into new kinds of obstacles. As in my earlier works this series focuses on people who are unseen because of their ordinariness. I create fiction, persons mixed from different elements of human figure based on my observations whilst commuting on the streets. ‘Boycotting Meekness’ is a work in progress project and it’s content and manifestation is constantly expanding. After creating the basic drawings and paintings I digitize and animate them using both frame by frame and digital mixed techniques. The final outcome of this body of work will be an immersive video installation where a complex mixture of short, fragmented stories would appear in a dark environment.