Dorottya Vékony has been dealing with fertility and reproductive rights for several years. Her attention is directed on situations where there is some kind of hindrance in this regard, where fertility turns into ‘barrenness’, where the event of birthing and birth cannot take place. Still rendered taboo and invisibilised before the society to this day, these situations often manifest as loss and trauma in the lives of the people affected. The artist looks at these phenomena (infertility, miscarriage, abortion) from different perspectives.
She examines the impact this can have on our self-image, what alternatives exist to resolve these issues and what medical and legal options (artificial insemination, adoption) are available for having children when natural means are not available. Her research also involves queer communities, non-natalists and those who choose to not have children for other reasons – where the ideals of gender roles, the heteronormative system and the nuclear family are being overturned. The focus of her interest is how the women she meets deal with these (crisis) situations and create new, supportive communities determined by empathy and acceptance.
Owing to her personal involvement, Dorottya Vékony herself participates in various workshops, community rites and discussions in order to explore different coping mechanisms and to make herself capable of coming to terms with these situations. The aim of the project is not only to voice the hushed difficulties related to reproduction, but also, as the title of the exhibition implies, to facilitate facing the problem and initiate the process of letting go.
In the exhibition, in which the artist also experiments with a number of media that are unusual for her, we gain insight into the various stages of this long-term research. Re-enactments of fertility rites, the exploration of symbols referring to the cyclical nature of life, gestures of liberation from the self are all reflected in her photographic series, installations and videos, so that moving through the exhibition space, the visitor can then arrive at the revelatory experience of acceptance and letting go.