Were we to contemplate in itself the opening photo series comprising a female figure starting to dance, we might believe that part of a ballet study or a turn of the century futurist/constructivist picture sequence breaking down the movement of the human body into phases was before us. The work, however, beyond its formalist characteristics, shows and tells a lot about its author, who in this case is more than a simple model (doubling). In the 1976 Individual Mythology, even in its title, indicates the precise consciousness and that endeavour for the author individuum to define her own intellectual and emotional basic position through it. This is her basic situation vis-à-vis art in general, and it is her basic situation vis-à-vis the direct artistic context.
For our discourse, it is the latter that is more important. In the resolution of the (woman) artist starting to dance, in my view, on the one hand – beyond the aesthetic qualities – it is the metaphor of shifting creative knowledge that strikes us, which reformulates the concept of art and its local parameters. The desire for breaking out from the existing canons reflects the modern quintessence of human freedom, denoting the demand and capacity for the revival of the individuum, the facts of the case taking off from the limits, as well as that special ”floating” situation, whose perspective lens is elliptically open to the world. To the world, it is not enough to discover, but with an active approach, moulding is also possible. And women’s intuition is not mistaken. For Drozdik, here is where art itself begins.
In the show, then, the photo series of rather exaggerated dimensions is perhaps not solely such an obvious example of the opening to accustomed eroticism in the art of the era, but rather a demonstration providing grounds for much more complex implications, in which, beyond the human body, thinking and the tender poetry of the soul also already have their say, anticipating all that the (female) artist has created over the past twenty-five years. In this first attempt in the formation of an individual mythology, beyond the potential for a flash of self-fulfilment, the critical brainwashing concerning the conditions of Hungarian art is rendered immensely important. The light gestures are also of extreme gravity; behind their inclinations, the dimensions of ”my world” and ”the world” are rendered visible simultaneously, with their own natural antagonisms.
In her new dance photographs which can be reinterpreted as movement operations, Drozdik undertakes another, no less dangerous, role – this is the province of ”prey”. The (female) artist, arriving into an illuminative state of self-forgetting, oblivious ecstasy, in the bodily condition of pushing off above the surface of the earth and floating, she sets an example of defencelessness and vulnerability – as a woman (a biological being) and as an artist (a spiritual being), equally. From here, then, it is just one step in thought to the consciousness of the ”victim” of oneself, to posing the problematic of the ”body-ego”, and thus, to the reality of the dissection table.
Marina Abramovic´, in the time, realised her image of the self-victim by the most brutal physical and chemical means. Drozdik has submitted via spiritual devices much more refined than these.