Performance in public spaces in Budapest and an exhibition at ISBN Gallery
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Date: 21–30 June 2022
Opening performance: June 30, 2022, 6- 8 p.m.
The complete exhibition will be on view for one night.
The complete exhibition will be on view for one night.
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Havana-based artist Eileen F. Almarales Noy is to spend six weeks in Budapest in June and July 2022 as resident of the artist exchange program between Budapest’s tranzit.hu and ArtistaXArtista in Havana. Following an open call for applications, the two organisations selected three Cuban and three Hungarian artists, who can spend a residency period in Budapest and Havana, respectively. In January 2020 Hungarian artist Márk Radics travelled to Havana, before the programme was interrupted by the pandemic. It is to continue now.
Eileen F. Almarales Noy often makes Cuba the starting point in her installation- and performance-based work, as she investigates the country’s controversial economic and political circumstances in a global context. Her generation knows that whatever the slogans say, the country’s political system, which is upheld with violence, is unjust and prevents people from accessing such real information and knowledge that would enable them to stand up for change. The artist is aware of the effects of a globally functioning world and the fact that the way to saving the Earth for the future leads through joining forces and solidarity, and not the erection of new borders.
Reaching the Skyline, her exhibition in Budapest, will be created in the course of a ten-day process. Ten painting actions will be held: each day, the artist will spread the soil she has brought from Cuba to form a small island at some location in the city, and use it blended with water as the material to paint an aquarelle, a cityscape. After the painting action she will collect the soil and the next day she will paint a skyline at another spot in the city, continuing until the soil runs out or mixes completely with the dust of the streets.
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The artist about the project:
“The Earth is an increasingly fragmented space, with physical and virtual walls marking the sense of belonging to a given territory. As a result, we often do NOT feel like the true inhabitants of Earth, since the political-administrative divisions lock us up in specific areas outside of which we are labelled as foreigners. Reaching the Skyline is an exhibition that explores our links with the planet. Observing ourselves as an inclusive group and not as a multiplicity of isolated elements is essential for the healthy and prosperous development of our Home. Territory, borders, nations, political-economic interests: we are at the mercy of the human machinery and its conflicts of interests that generate divisions that destabilize the balance of our planet and determine our place in it. So the freedom of humans and the wellbeing of Earth depend completely on these often conflicting economic and political motives, which cause divisions and destabilization. Additionally, as we are losing contact with nature, that gap grows between the electrified concrete jungle and the natural stability of our habitat. Day after day the big cities bombard us with futuristic images, a vision of a robotic world, but is this really the way forward? Is this real? Or are we at the mercy of the arrogance and naivety of our species?”
“The Earth is an increasingly fragmented space, with physical and virtual walls marking the sense of belonging to a given territory. As a result, we often do NOT feel like the true inhabitants of Earth, since the political-administrative divisions lock us up in specific areas outside of which we are labelled as foreigners. Reaching the Skyline is an exhibition that explores our links with the planet. Observing ourselves as an inclusive group and not as a multiplicity of isolated elements is essential for the healthy and prosperous development of our Home. Territory, borders, nations, political-economic interests: we are at the mercy of the human machinery and its conflicts of interests that generate divisions that destabilize the balance of our planet and determine our place in it. So the freedom of humans and the wellbeing of Earth depend completely on these often conflicting economic and political motives, which cause divisions and destabilization. Additionally, as we are losing contact with nature, that gap grows between the electrified concrete jungle and the natural stability of our habitat. Day after day the big cities bombard us with futuristic images, a vision of a robotic world, but is this really the way forward? Is this real? Or are we at the mercy of the arrogance and naivety of our species?”
The exhibition is realized in collaboration between tranzit.hu and ISBN books+gallery
Photo: Julianna Nyíri