Zsófia Szemző
1982, Budapest
Zsófia Szemző’s artistic approach is deeply rooted in anthropology, blending a unique mix of social scientific curiosity with elements of magical thinking. Her work spans a wide range of genres and media: drawings, watercolours, collages, photographs and videos, clay and porcelain objects, spatial installations, ephemeral projects and participatory works.
What unites her works is a continuous pursuit for synthesis. She is interested in the in-between spaces: those that lie at the intersection of history, collective social experiences, and personal perception, constantly looking for the meeting points where similarities and differences converge. She can be both playful and serious about 'the matters of the world', yet her approach and attitude are always optimistic, hopeful, and solution-seeking.
Her range of topics is similarly diverse. She often addresses specific social problems such as migration, Eastern European identities, and economic inequalities – in her works, she offers theoretical alternatives, creative inspiration, and visions, seeking ways to build upon personal experiences. She frequently explores these abstract themes through real-life phenomena, elaborating them as case studies. Both literally and metaphorically, her works are characterized by a lack of background: people, natural phenomena, animals, plants, and objects are extracted from their original contexts and placed into new ones.
She has long been preoccupied with situations that have gone wrong, situations that have been upset, objects that have become unusable: themes such as fixability, failure, danger, and risk – along with the concepts of certainty, uncertainty, and the notion of home – feature prominently in her work. She is interested in the relationship between man and nature, in the changes and entropies that occur in nature. Her work also examines the phenomenon of coexistence and community, investigating what people have in common and what separates them from each other, whether they are specific ethnic groups, nations, or members of an indefinable, imaginary culture.
