A művészettörténet találkozása a társadalmi nemek tudományával. Háztartási munkát reprezentáló kortárs műalkotások. The Meeting of Art History and Gender Studies. Contemporary Hungarian artworks representing housework

Tatai, Erzsébet (2013) A művészettörténet találkozása a társadalmi nemek tudományával. Háztartási munkát reprezentáló kortárs műalkotások. The Meeting of Art History and Gender Studies. Contemporary Hungarian artworks representing housework. Ars Hungarica, 39 (3). pp. 279-301. ISSN 0133-1531

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Abstract

In Hungary, only 8.8% of the Members of Parliament are women. According to 2012 statistics, this places Hungary 117th (of 137) in the world and last but one in Europe and clearly shows the position of women in Hungarian public life. While the number of woman artists has grown significantly in the past two decades, as has the ratio of female to male graduates over the last 60 years, and today there are more women than men in higher art education – all of this is indicative of the devaluation of the artistic career, rather than the true emancipation of women. Very few woman artists reflect on gender roles or the subjection of women, and even the best of them claim that they are not feminists, as they realise that such a statement would put them at a disadvantage in a male chauvinistic field. So it is ‘shy’, ‘latent’ or ‘subtle’ feminism that prevails in Hungarian contemporary art. Nevertheless, works of art have begun to appear that question traditional gender roles by thematizing the division of labour between the sexes. The following works, for example, focus on work traditionally assigned to women (household work): Ágnes Eperjesi’s Weekly Menu (2000) and Colour fade-out washing machine (2009), Luca Gőbölyös’ I Want to Get Married! (2010), Anna Fabricius’ Tigress of housekeeping (2006), Erika Baglyas’ 100 sheets (2004) and Kriszta Nagy’s exhibition entitled I am a Contemporary Housewife (1999). These artworks – from paintings and photographs to videos and installations – apply advanced imaging technology and the repertoire of the dramaturgy of professional cooking shows and modern visual culture to erode the borders between labour done privately and publicly, for free and for money, as well as between creative and reproductive labour. After an overview of the use of Gender Studies, this paper seeks to find a context in which the ‘shy’ feminism of Hungarian artists is explicable.

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