Lilla Szász’s exhibition showcases works that are parts of her emblematic projects but are rarely seen or have not yet been shown in Hungary. Related thematically, the four projects span twenty-five years. Children of Perestroika is from 1998, the first years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Desires and the Daughters projects took place in Hungary in 2005, and 700 meters in Cuba in 2023.
In the photos selected for this show, young people are breaking out of the rigid forms of restriction – politiocal oppression or other forms of limitation. Szász explores what feeds the desires of these groups of young people, what their points of orientation are, what brings them to (or away from) their communities. What happens when there is no revolution, but information is already there – information that reaches these groups in the simplest form, in the most accessible way, conveyed in mass culture, sports, the flood of images of consumption. In this visuality, the material world is manifested as an ideal to strive for.
Like always in her projects, now too, Szász always lives with or as close as possible to the groups or individuals she studied. She does not come to these situations with the intention to provide answers or offer possible solutions. Instead, the projects conclude in what they can offer most authentically: she helps formulate relevant questions precisely. Questions that can help those affected as well as those in positions of power to understand the situation – and latter also to experience the situation. What Szász provides is not the solution, but without what she provides there is no solution.