How do we relate to our own cultural heritage? Do we turn to folk traditions with nostalgia, reservations, or perhaps a new kind of curiosity? How do folk motifs live on in contemporary visual culture?
Inherited Patterns turns back to familiar elements of Hungarian visual and material culture: iconic dishes of Hungarian gastronomy, everyday objects of the home, as well as folk traditions are all on the table. The works presented are not built on a nostalgic evocation of folklore: through their personal experiences and individual perspectives, the exhibiting artists examine their relationship with traditions, the concept of home, and cultural heritage.
Article by Balázs Gáspár.
Life is about legacy. We have all inherited a great many things: eye color and height, receptors and blood types, in the best case spatial-visual and creative skills, in the worst case cardiovascular diseases. Beyond that, we have inherited a language or languages—and through them an entire worldview and way of thinking—Roman ruins and medieval cathedrals, folk songs about heartbreak and proverbs, recipes tested a thousand times, and useless but beautiful ornaments. The Hungarian word örökség (heritage), in its inherited words, contains örök (eternal), meaning: lifelong, continuously existing, ceaseless. In this case, our language well conveys the feeling that everything we perceive as part of our heritage must, or at least should, exist forever.
It is through the web of all these and many other kinds of heritage that certain social structures, group dynamics, and individual patterns are created, which determine our lives in time and space—as traditions, community customs and individual roles, as decorative elements, and in the use of objects. In summer we cook in a cauldron, at Easter we sprinkle. During the pig slaughter between the two, men drink pálinka and kill the pig, while women process the meat. Around the house, there are carefully carved woodwork and spontaneously created architectural elements; in the rooms, there are decorative plates hanging on walls and hand-woven textiles. Of course, we do not necessarily live (only) according to these anymore, but they are still existing heritages and defining patterns nonetheless.
At the same time, these are not meant to be merely preserved in their presumed originality, but rather to be lived and used in our own way. All this requires individual and collective memories, family stories and kitchen rituals, motifs seen many times or unknown, objects kept preciously or rendered functionless, emotional involvement, and critical distance.
In the exhibition, interpretation and reinterpretation characterize the works that focus on national symbols and stereotypes. Zita Majoros condensed the best-known Hungarian visual and verbal codes into a cauldron, showing with parodic conciseness that they reveal as little about us as they do much. Just like paprika, we got the word "bogrács" (cauldron) from the Turks; cultures never exist in isolation, but in constant interaction. And knowing the long-standing fascination and interest of Hungarian artists in Japan, it is not surprising that on Bálint Varga's picture, a kaiju, or giant monster, has its eye on a bowl of cauldron goulash. Food and drink otherwise occupy a prominent place in our culture; the modern reinterpretations of the plates hanging on walls and flasks standing on shelves, found at many of our grandparents' homes—the creations of Viktória Hitka and Anita Monori—prompt us to pause and reflect on objects that are otherwise almost invisible in everyday use. To eat and drink, one must also work, for example, slaughter a pig, an event to which a defined order and gender roles belong; Dorottya Kránicz's works re-examine and challenge certain customs, as heritage can also pass on questionable patterns. Réka Csondor and Csongor G. Szigeti approached our built environment and the visible traces of the nameless folk artists of the modern age more as observers, pointing out that spontaneous and improvised solutions and forms belong to us just the same. Johanna Kügerl and Sári Szántó evoke the personal, inner spaces of home through childhood memories and collective material culture, lace tablecloths, and socialist-realist furniture; moods that likely awaken a memory of an old day in all of us. For Eszter Révész, hand-woven textiles meant home, which inspired her to recreate traditional ornamentation in a contemporary form. Balázs Csizik encountered floral decorations on the works of his woodcarver grandfather; using these and entering them into a dialogue with his own work, he continues his family heritage in a personal way.
The origin is not that important; rather the path that an object, motif, or custom takes. It does not matter where the paprika came from; it became part of Hungarian culture because of what we did with it. Our heritages work the same way: we use, shape, misunderstand, reinterpret, pass on, or let them go. Culture is not a collection of unchanging forms, but a fabric of layered stories, memories, and customs. And inherited patterns are not rules set in stone, but open systems that each generation must fill with meaning again and again through their own experiences.
The graphics and t-shirt created for the exhibition can be viewed here.