Ilona Németh

1963

Biography

(*1963, Dunajská Streda)

is one of the most respected representatives of contemporary visual art at home and abroad; she is interested in gender and social topics, and moving the boundary between the public and the private. She is active in institutional criticism and social and political activism related to the environment of Hungarian and Slovak culture. Her early years were marked by Postmodern poetics before she moved to more objective and radical forms of found objects and installation, and their wider contextual defining. She was moving towards more grandiose and striking sets and targeted impacts on the environment. She later left behind the issues of aesthetics and concentrated on the address-orientation and utterance of her works through which she examines diverse topical social problems such as the Eastern Sugar project in Kunsthalle, Bratislava, 2018). Several of her daring furniture “sculptures” and installations are considered “icons of feminism” of the 1990s. These days she primarily works with object, installation, video and art in public spaces. She studied typography and book art at the Academy of Applied Arts in Budapest (1981 – 1986), where in 2006 she finished her postgraduate doctoral studies. She is co-founder and co-organizer of the activities of STUDIA erté (1987 – 1997, the Transart Communication festival of multimedia art in Nové Zámky). After graduating from the Academy, she began to work on both the Hungarian and Slovak visual art scenes. She has led the IN studio at the Department of Intermedia and Multimedia at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava since 2004. She won the award of the S. Márai Foundation (1998), the Munkácz Award (2001) and others. She represented Slovakia at the 49th Venice Biennale (2001, along with J. Surůvka). She lives and works in Dunajská Streda. Selected international exhibitions: After the Wall. Art and Culture in Post-Communist Europe. Moderna Museet, Stocholm; Aspekte/Positionen. 50 Jahre Kunst aus Mitteleuropa 1949 – 1999. Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna (1999); Gender Check: Femininity and Masculinity in the Art of Eastern Europe. Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna (2009); A hős, a hősnő és a szerző/ The Hero, the Heroine and the Author. Kortárs Művészeti Múzeum – Ludwig Múzeum/Museum of Contemporary Art – Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest (2012). Representation in collections: Győri Városi Múzeum, Győr; Kortárs Művészeti Múzeum – Ludwig Múzeum, Budapest; New Bedford Whaling Museum, New Bedford; Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava; Art Gallery of Považie Region in Žilina.