1. Tell us a little about how it all started…
2. Your works, even within sculpting…
3. You are saying ‘these are not animals’…
4. Based on what you said, your femininity …
5. If you had to select an animal…
6. Each of your works contains a hidden …
7. How do you prepare for the next…
1. My path is not ordinary, I didn’t study sculpting. I had a Dead Poets’ Society kind of art teacher when I was young, who gave me the initial push and the Saturday afternoons spent at the art colony at Százados út also influenced me. In my teenage years, I could follow closely as my father built his art collection and seeing his astonishment about the works, I felt that it was art that was truly capable of triggering this admiration. We only had one sculpture, a prominent work by Miklós Borsos in the garden, but we had quite the collection of outstanding Hungarian paintings of the 19th and 20th century and, since there was no other artist in the family, my father liked the thought of me becoming a painter. But I always liked clay, plasticity and spatial forms. I was a little special, somehow I could never quite fit in, and the schools couldn’t hold my attention, I always marched to my own beat. I was, in fact, 30 years old and a mother of two children, when the energy I had inside was released and without any particular pre-training, these sculptures just erupted from me.
2. The ‘coiling’ technique itself goes back thousands of years. I thought that if I could do a vast Mediterranean-style amphora this way, I could create a sculpture, too. I build my large sculpture from fireclay in a way that it is able to hold itself up, I do not use any reinforcement, I just follow a thorough static concept. The sculptures are hollow inside, which is key to the representation that I am known for. This way, I have greater possibilities and freedom of form. This is not an approved sculpting technique, it is very complicated and risky. Such dimensions require particularly large stamina and effort.
3. Without digging deeper into the meaning of symbols, I realized that this subconscious language was coded into us all and I can communicate via the zoomorphological features of animals, through sacral attributes, or in the form of mythological creatures. In short, I understood how rich the symbol system used to express our world view, our faith, our ideals, and in fact, ourselves through animals is.
4. I would rather say that my personality has evolved and I can express myself through my sculptures better than with anything else. Not even my dress style can reflect who I am. That is why everyone notices how powerful, sometimes masculine these sculptures are despite my feminine side. It is also true that success and the possibility of having an impact on people through my work makes me more confident, which a stylish makeup or suit alone would not be able to do. Artists are often exhibitionist. We want to be admired through our works and, perhaps, by our appearance.
5. There is nothing that could better express the many qualities of women than cats. Each cat has its own individual character. Most of the women have a strong tendency to criticize, which I have displayed as the howling female lion. It intended to be a social criticism, as well, for I could not express the anger I felt inside otherwise.
6. The most authentic way I found to express my free, rebelling, critical nature is through my works. The unicorn lying on its back was inspired by the realization of the impact we have on our environment and that we do have the ability of influencing our fate with our actions. Our sense of security is shaken one way or another by what is happening with our planet, and at one point everyone feels that ‘nothing is like it was before’. Reflecting on a world with values lost, in the midst of a crisis of values, I covered this sculpture with old engravings.
7. I have been planning an individual exhibition for a long time, which I intend to be a happy affair where I can present my latest work. I can't imagine a better place than Várkert Bazár, with its balcony overlooking Budapest. When a theme begins to show and my sculptures change, I go through the same changes. My first sculptures had shapes that had been splintered into atoms and then reassembled. Now, they are becoming more neat and uncluttered. I am moving from the figurative towards abstract, which I think would be impossible without understanding the above. This is a very exciting journey, and it is only the beginning for me and all those accompanying me.