Exhibition

The "Delft Blue" was developed in the Netherlands in the 17th century to replace the increased demand for Chinese porcelain with domestic products. White clay ceramics approached Chinese quality and quickly spread throughout Europe. In the early stages of production, the "chinoiserie" style of painting blue patterns on a white background was typical. Chinese porcelain often bears generic meanings. We see people in everyday situations that reflect their way of life, their environment; landscapes, gardens, interiors. In the Netherlands, the Chinese system of motifs and genre has been replaced by representations of local customs and traditions, from farm work to boats, from windmills to skating, to life in the colonies, which we can now look at with a critical eye. Delft became the centre of this style, and has since been referred to as Delft Blue.

The Budapest Blue series of exhibitions is – after Delft Blue – the Budapest and specifically Hungarian version of Ágnes Szabó Eszter. Her own private mythological collection is a projection of her personal experiences and milestones, embroidered or painted in blue, sometimes red, on the border between reality and fiction. In his work, EASZ seeks to follow the tradition of the janitorial and porcelain genre, but by depicting current events from which the artist cannot escape and which affect the life of a city and perhaps a whole country. Events and situations, both foreign and domestic, that enter everyday life in one way or another, and that we see before us as contemporary images of life, be it the refugee crisis, gender issues, the state of education, protests, evictions, food distribution, economic and social issues, that constantly prompt us to reflect or self-reflect. How can we reconcile our traditions with the scale of change we are experiencing every day? How can we live with the relics of the past in our changed way of life?

These wall protectors are no longer the happy and sad images of the bourgeoisie or peasantry, nor are they a means of domestic expression, but rather a questioning and critical commentary that EASZ's work brings to the public. For years we have been living in a gigantic and controlled consultation process and we hardly notice how little space we have left to make our own comments. Freedom of expression is once again being squeezed into ever tighter spaces, including kitchens and family dinner tables, where there has always been room for debate. Wall hangings and tapestries, and even tableware, are an inspiration to draw a line between past and future and between personal and public space, and to engage in real dialogue.

The search for a private mythology and critical perspective / good practice is linked at one point, with perhaps the first critique of power in Greek mythology, the tapestry of Arakhné. Although political power today does not present mortals with its famous transformations, its grape bunches or even its swans, but with symbols that are important and relevant to it, the ancient tapestry of Arakhné and Pallas Athéné can serve as a lesson for those who wish to see the glorious deeds of power, or even the less glorious ones. Arakhné's tapestry may have been the first feminist critical work recorded (by Ovid), so its reconstruction and presentation, alongside other wall protectors and plates, is one of the central ideas of the exhibition.