In the kitchen, in bed, in public

From the year 2000 on, the Hungarian fine art scene witnessed the appearance of oeuvres that, by nature, have engaged in a discourse about gender construction. Artists began to re-evaluate and comment on how gender is constructed, how it is reproduced, which categories are used to identify notions of “this is a man” and “this is a woman.”

They explore the ordinary category-system of this cultural perception, as well as investigate how such system can be reversed. They discuss the ideals and rules of appropriate and non-appropriate femininity (and masculinity), the codes of purity, the affirmative nature of performativity embodied in rituals and repetitions, tools of female domestication, or the controlled institution of normative sexuality, i.e. marriage.

Thanks to the generation of the late nineties, Hungarian discourse also noticed and took over certain phenomena; however –in line with international trends – the forthcoming younger generation can be characterized by a so-called cooling out (Burton R. Clark) with an attitude of distancing themselves from feminist criticism and the female voice in public contexts.

The exhibition juxtaposes works from the representatives of these two generations; their pieces attack social stereotypes that are sustained to define women’s place through “household terms” (as perpetuated by idiomatic expressions and jokes in the oral tradition), and to normalize women’s behavioral codes and appearance according to an environment domesticated by male preferences. The artists and their work make statements about the cultural representations of women, as well as their stereotypes and their place in the social space.

curator: Kata Oltai