“I had to throw a heavy rock into the puddle for everyone to look up and to not be the only one who feels dirty.” – Zsuzsi Ujj
Zsuzsi Ujj’s presentation at Arcadia Missa marks her first solo exhibition in the UK, comprising a selection of photographs taken between 1985 and 1991.
A celebrated figure of Hungarian underground culture, Ujj was steadfastly multidisciplinary, working as a photographer, performer, singer, and member of the fledgling underground art and music scene. Poetry, lyrics, music and visual art worked in close unison within her practice, bound together by a powerful skill for image-making and an ability to convey melancholic moods infused with ironic, at times grotesque humour. As the frontwoman of the band Csókolom, or “I kiss [your hand]” in English, she had an uninhibited approach to the camera, with the directness of a performer rather than the caution of a documentarian.
Produced in solitude, across a concentrated period in late 1980s Budapest, it was a process somewhat closer to ritual than documentation. Set against the socio-political landscape of the Eastern Bloc, Zsuzsi Ujj’s work embodies the tension between communist rule and growing openness. As Hungary approached a period of transition and uncertainty, her works naturally surveyed themes around alienation, self-performance and resistance.
The twelve works gathered at the gallery unfold as a single, sustained act of self-possession, almost like a ceremony. In her series of self-portraits, she establishes not only photography but her own body as the medium. Works such as Háttal fóliás / Wrapped from behind, 1986, and Esküvős / Bridal, 1986 – 2023, reflect the isolation inherent to her process, which involved mostly a self-timer and body paint. The body paint acts as a mask, veiling vulnerability, while emphasising the female corporeal experience through a character that is not recognisable as her. What results is a construction of scenes that absorb and then quietly demolish the social scripts written for women’s bodies. Ujj as bride and skeleton, as lover and corpse; paint covering her body in gestures that compress a wedding portrait into possible readings of life, death, love, self-discovery, destiny, and command. She stages the coupledom, but plays all the parts: herself, the partner, the institution, and its undoing.
Her titles are blunt, carrying the same quality as her music, a quiet contradiction that refuses to prettify what it narrates. Ujj’s cinematic thinking plays a prominent role, visible in the way she tells stories and in her use of film-style settings. As a self-professed lover of legends and tales, particularly about women, Ujj’s practice contains a mythological sensibility. In Körbe / Circle, 1991, the final series in Ujj’s oeuvre, rite has a different register. Across the sequence of four frames, the inverted double exposure allows Ujj’s figure to multiply, resurface and finally, dissolve, drawing a full circle.
Despite her self-proclaimed aversion to community and inclination towards solitude, her works can be viewed as relational and tender, reaching for something beyond performed societal constraints. The photographs are all at once a record of someone performing for no one, and for everyone.
Zsuzsi Ujj (b. 1959, Veszprém, HU) is an artist and performer who lives and works between Veszprém and Budapest. The rediscovery of her work began in the late 2000s, resulting in her participation in prestigious international exhibitions.
Ujj has exhibited works at MAGMA Contemporary Art Space, Sfântu Gheorghe, RO (2023); Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, US (2023); MUMOK, Vienna, AT (2023); acb Gallery, Budapest, HU (2023); Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest, HU (2022); Liget Gallery, Budapest, HU (2021); New Museum, New York, US (2014); Tate Modern, London, UK (2012); Fotogalerie Wien, Vienna, AT (1988), amongst others.
Her works are included in major public collections such as the Getty Museum, Los Angeles (US); Janus Pannonius Museum, Pécs (HU); Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest (HU), amongst others.
