Kókay Krisztina (Esztergom, 2005)
JUDIT ABA-NOVAK Foreword Krisztina Kókay is known as a textile artist, that is what she considers herself She received her degree as a textile artist at the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts in 1967. After finishing her studies she started working for an industrial design workshop with the same enthusiasm as her immediate, pioneering forerunners, Irén Body, Aranka Hübner and others. Losing hope she soon gave up the futile effort and tried to break free in other directions just as they did. Later on when she worked for the Paper Making Company she could at least see some of her napkin designs manufactured. But it could not really provide inspiration, to the young artist, who is not a born fighter but a quiet and sensitive person. It was not what she had been preparing for. She gained some experience but not enough to move forward. She went into her shell for a while and tried to bury the initial difficult experiences. Luckily enough her suppressed desire for harmony could find expression in creating a home and becoming a mother. Her creative sensitivity has been maintained or even grown. Krisztina Kókay s debut coincided both with the Hungarian textile artists legendary exhibition at the Ernst Museum in 1968, entitled Textile Tapestry 68, which was a great breakthrough, and the beginning of the Szombathely Biennials. This breakthrough was considered something like a miracle at the time, so suddenly and powerfully did the suppressed energies and talents come to the surface. Two and a half decades later it looks more like "necessity than" miracle, just like the rich and unbroken flourishing that followed. It was a wonder, though, that at the time so many talented artists produced so much, that they could join forces and create a lasting forum for themselves. The prerequisites for entering the Biennials actually had worked against on Krisztina Kókay s chosen means of expression: classical gobelin and printed textile were merely tolerated or even excluded from the Biennials. Still the Biennials were the occasions where modern Hungarian textile art "came to being" where there was real competition. Each artist had to defend his or her own beliefs, they had to fight for new ideas and means of expression. No one could be successful with old and well proven patterns. In 1968 a genuine artistic struggle began, there were sharp debates among the textile artists, which in a paradoxical way led to the revival of gobelin and printer, dyed textiles. The artists met the challenge - a place was established where, after all, not words but artistic values mattered. It was the Biennials that Krisztina Kókay started her interrupted career again. She took part in the Velem Symposium in 1981. This "training camp" gave her forther impetus and carried her first to the International Miniature Textile Biennial in Szombathely, then to all the other textile Biennials and every significant national and international textile exhibition. So for she has had a chance to finish only one large-scale composition, which she designed together with the interior- architect Villő Detre, it can be seen in the lobby and restaurant of Hotel Flamenco, Budapest. This tapestry was woven under a lucky star, because, from the very first idea of the work, until the finishing touches the two artists worked really very closely together, and the result is an extremely elegant, harmonic and mature work of art. This type of exemplary cooperation between artists happens very seldom. Subsequent "decorating" is common practice, but it is quite harmful for bringing out genuine esthetic correlations. Looking at her ouvre might ask whether she is a graphic designer or a textile artist. What, apart from her degree, makes her a textile artist? But it is a misleading question. Graphic art and printed textile are closely related to each other, both use the technique of printing and share almost the same technology. Rather, let us concentrate on the works of art themselves.
