In her series “It cannot rain forever”, Noémi Szécsi explores a divisive theme. She seeks to dismantle centuries-old judgments associated with witchcraft, and to show the communities of women who define themselves as witches in Hungary today, a world that is unknown and invisible to many. When we hear the word witch, most of us think of a woman who lives on the margins of society, living in solitude, using magic with malicious intent and frightening appearance.
This impression is well-established in our childhood tales of evil witches. However, these stories are only the surface, and we need to look for deeper and more complex reasons behind the negative associations with the word witch. But actually the fairy tale world is a simplified record of the centuries during which the this negative image of women was created During the Inquisition, the cases of women convicted of witchcraft and thus ostracized from the life of the community caused social changes that can still be felt in today’s society. The traces of this social exclusion can be found, among other things, in folk traditions and folklore.
The focus of Noémi Szécsi’s interest is on women who have experienced great emotional depths and who have found their spiritual strength in the various branches of witchcraft. What they have in common is their belief in everyday signs, their ability to control their own destiny and their knowledge of a world that remains hidden to the uninitiated. In addition to the details of the reality they experience, Noémi Szécsi presents a portrait of a woman that gives new meanings to the word witch. An image of a woman that embraces the pain of centuries of suffering and the social subordination that this entails, but is also capable of redefining herself. It proclaims the power of vulnerable women who, finding each other in their exclusion, create a community for themselves.
Noémi Szécsi’s series “It cannot rain forever” consists primarily of portraits, but is also complemented by other genres such as landscape and still life, which provide a broader contextualisation, showing a community event, ritual or objects and places. All of these are gathered in symbolic compositions that avoid the commonplace imagery of witches.