William Penn Life, 2009 (44. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2009-12-01 / 12. szám
Urban Portraits Exploring the relationship between art and the urban communities from which it arises by Izabel Galliera With the the financial assistance I received this summer from the Hungarian Room Committee Grant, I was able to spend 10 weeks in Budapest conducting research for my dissertation while being immersed in the multi-faceted local culture. I had the opportunity to visit art museums and galleries and explore various cultural venues in the city, such as the Hungarian State Opera House, a neo-Renaissance style structure built in the late 19th century under the Austria-Hungary Empire. My Hungarian friends working in the local contemporary art field introduced me to smaller, alternative gallery spaces with diverse exhibition programs and innovative artistic initiatives by both local and international artists. During the weekends, we went on day trips to nearby cities and sculpture parks. I was intrigued to discover Dunaújváros (absent from any tourist guide books), an entire city built 60 years ago under the communist regime's directives on the banks of the Danube to house the workers employed in the then newly founded steel factory. Going on a walking tour of the city, I was fascinated by the multi-textured architectural juxtapositions; for instance, a few early modem-style buildings dating to the early 1950s stood next to socialist classical-style residential and public structures, like the large steel factory with colorful friezes depicting scenes of various workers' activities. Most importantly, through the city tour, I was introduced to Tamas Kaszás, whose critical art practice I intend to further examine. A contemporary Hungarian artist who grew up (and still lives in the city), Kaszás conceives and leads urban walking tours of Dunaújváros to tourists as part of his artistic work. Furthermore, the Hungarian Room Committee grant allowed me to conduct research for my dissertation at the Artpool Archive, Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art Archive and Műcsarnok Archive. Artpool is one of the most comprehensive archives on alternative and non-official art practices of the 1960s and 1970s in Hungary. It also holds significant material on contemporary art in Hungary and other Eastern and Central European nations. In my dissertation, I will focus on contemporary art practices engaging particular communities and intervening within the urban fabric of the city in post-1989 Central and East Europe. As a result of my summer research in the various archives, I became aware of relevant local events and exhibitions of such artistic practices throughout the 1990s and early 2000s happening in both Hungary and neighboring countries, such as Romania. I look forward to closely exploring this material and articulating the complexities of this particular exhibition art discourse. Most importantly, my nearly three-month stay in Budapest allowed me to meet for the first time the Hungarian contemporary artist Miklós Erhardt, whose work I will investigate in my dissertation. Our meetings helped me better understand his work and also to familiarize myself with some his newer projects. For instance, in one of his works, Erhardt proposes an alternative urban geography of the city of Turin as reimagined through the views of recent immigrants in the city. In another project, he reveals one of Budapest's occluded urban layers through the eyes of socially and politically marginalized homeless individuals. In multiple ways, contemporary artists such as Erhardt collaborate with specific communities to create projects that often take the form of interventions and fluid physical interactions. These projects activate particular spatial dimensions ultimately to give visibility to the socio-political and economic exclusions deeply etched beneath and within the everyday fabric of the city. The Hungarian Room Committee Grant has not only provided me with the opportunity to conduct my dissertation work, it also exposed me to artistic practices relevant for my research. Additionally, it enabled me to immerse myself within the local context and directly encounter some of the socio-urban sites at the core of these artistic projects. William Penn Life, December 2009 15 ABOUT THE AUTHOR Izabel Gailiera is pursuing her doctorate in the history of art and architecture at the University of Pittsburgh. She earned her master’s degree in art history from Troy University. She hopes to be a curator for a contemporary art institution.
