Solidarity with Hungarian artists
In the second half of the 20th century, Eastern Europeans – including both Poles and Hungarians – often viewed their relationship with the West with nostalgia, but also ambition. The early 2000s saw similar aspirations emerge within the right-wing movements of both countries. After one election defeat, Jarosław Kaczyński famously promised that Warsaw would one day become a second Budapest – a promise that came to fruition in 2015.
Recent years have shown us that the divisions – both within individual nations and across the heterogeneous entity that is Europe – have only become deeper. Against this backdrop, the cultural programme accompanying Poland’s Presidency of the EU Council poses a timely and well-placed question: what does solidarity mean today? This particular exhibition was held at the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center in Budapest, a major institution dedicated since 2013 to mapping photography in Eastern Europe. Its activity has coincided with sweeping political and cultural changes. Under Viktor Orbán, the Fidesz party has made cultural institutions instruments of the state and slashed funding for any initiatives deemed ‘politically incorrect’. Two key turning points in this shift were the rejection of Barnabás Bencsik – a respected curator and long-serving cultural figure – in the contest to remain director of the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Budapest (a role he held from 2008 to 2013), and the move to enshrine the Imre Makovecz-founded Hungarian Academy of Arts – a private initiative sympathetic to Fidesz – as a public institution tasked with safeguarding cultural heritage and artistic freedom. The latter has resulted in the academy taking over most institutions and public arts funding, and for years now, independent Hungarian art has only survived thanks to private-sector support and grassroots efforts seeking to counterbalance the government’s one-dimensional narrative. A great example have been the five editions so far of the OFF Biennale Budapest, which have also featured Polish artists.
Organising a Polish-Hungarian exhibition at a time when tensions between the two countries are so high is as bold as it is intriguing. It could be considered a forced closeness – but isn’t it sometimes worth extending a hand? To offer something to those who’ve stopped engaging with Hungary’s institutional art scene, or to artists for whom public exhibitions have become a rarity? The nonconformism cited by the curators reflects not only a rejection of the art market and its commercialism, but also a distancing from certain values and stylistic frameworks dictated by the state and the dead end they create.
Writing some years ago in Dwutygodnik, Stach Szabłowski observed that Hungarian contemporary art often resembled a hat that artists were trying to place on the cultural consciousness of society – without much thought as to whether it fit Hungarian heads at all. And because the hat had been largely sewn by the state, it was easy to knock off and replace with an old Magyar cap. Fortunately, as this exhibition shows, that Magyar cap doesn’t fit every head either.
Originally written in Polish by Marta Czyż, May 2025, translated by Adam Zulawski, June 2025
