I spent the past few years travelling; I worked in Korea, China and Belgium. I always lived the everyday life of new places and new people, and theirs became my unconstrained everyday life. After all, the way I could connect with people was my home. The photos of the exhibition seem like a single visual unit, but they are based on two different qualities. I took them where I felt, even if temporarily, at home.
I took pictures of my environment that exists in a reality independent of me. I placed, or rather, I “nested” the initials of my family members and myself afterwards into these scenes, as gigantic stone or concrete objects. The material of these letters hints at the fact that I have become who I am now as a result of many events, stories, memories, as well as the rewriting and reinterpretation of them, that is, of everything I experienced.
The five leather hangings created in 2008 marked the significant beginning in a new chapter of contemplating identity, that is why they are selected in with new artworks. I drew domestic scenes on the leather pieces based on archive family photos. I substituted the children, myself and my brother for our initials.
While I was working on the piece, I could put an interpretation of identity into shape that is not founded on what I am like and who I am for myself, but rather, on myself as the subject of the stories and connections that I experience. It is the context, my relationships that determine who I am, not my qualities.
Marienne Csáky