The works created at the Tihany Artists’ Colony break away from the romantic, aestheticized representation of nature and from the avant-garde’s authoritarian interventions into the landscape. Instead, they conceive of the environment under investigation as a “hybrid entity” shaped jointly by human and nonhuman factors.
Bruno Latour’s network theory provides the theoretical core of the exhibition, breaking down the rigid, modernist boundary between nature and culture. Tihany’s distinctive ecosystem—the volcanic basalt, the limnic character of Lake Balaton, and the local vegetation—constitutes a material archive in which layers of geological time and human agency (tourism, landscape transformation) have become inextricably inscribed upon one another.
Nature-based and site-specific projects presented in the exhibition are based on the principle of “living material.” Here, the materials of nature are not passive carriers but active co-authors, shaping the artwork through their own physical resistance and historicity.
The works are mostly ephemeral, biodegradable structures, with the aesthetics of transience playing a central role in the exhibition. Through drying, disintegration, and erosion, the works are not destroyed but reach their fulfilment. These transformations unfold before our eyes, reminding us that behind the vulnerability of the local environment lies the global ecological fragility of our entire planet.