Contributing creator Caitlin Swindell is the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions on the Lowe Artwork Museum, College of Miami. She has held curatorial positions on the Denver Artwork Museum and the Museum of Modern Artwork (MOCA) Jacksonville, labored as an artwork guide in Santa Fe, NM, and accomplished internships at numerous establishments, together with the Museum of Tremendous Arts, Boston, the Smithsonian Nationwide Portrait Gallery, and the New Orleans Museum of Artwork.

Andrea Fajgerné Dudás (b. 1985) is an artist, up to date painter, housewife, feminist, efficiency artist, and a mom of two. She is represented by Erika Deák Gallery in Budapest, Hungary. For extra data, go to the artist’s web site at https://fajgerne.com/.

That is Half 2 of an in-depth interview with the artist. To learn Half 1, click on HERE.

Picture of the artist in entrance of her work.

Caitlin: You will have additionally created some performance-based work in relation to the Housewife collection—utilizing mops and making jam. Might you converse a little bit extra on these performances. How do you go about creating them? What meanings or experiences do you hope viewers would possibly achieve from seeing them?

Andrea: The style of Eat Artwork is usually manifested as a taking place, which pursuits me as a result of I can work together with the viewers, partaking them and pushing them out of their consolation zone whereas placing myself in an improvisational, unplanned scenario.

In 2010, as a scholarship holder, I used to be launched to Eat Artwork, which was taught as a separate topic on the College of Dresden. As well as, seeing Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Social gathering set up stay that very same 12 months was a defining expertise. Then in 2013, I met Daniel Spoerri in individual, had a dialog about artwork, and tasted his Inexperienced Paradise stew. In the identical 12 months, I met Eszter Agnes Szabó, with whom I’ve been actively working and considering ever since. Since 2010, I’ve been creating Eat Artwork happenings recurrently, working towards a type of artwork remedy as I feed the viewers symbolically whereas breaking them out of their on a regular basis habits. It’s vital to emphasize that I create occasions the place I provoke the viewers, and though I comply with a deliberate situation, I by no means know the way the viewers will really react, or what is going to occur. Any taking place I create might be repeated, however it’s going to by no means be the identical as a result of it’s influenced by the viewers, the situation, the time of 12 months, and different actions that happen throughout the efficiency. I’m impressed by the response of the viewers and the method, the occasion, and the interactions.

My Happenings obtain what my work by no means do, which is to achieve all ranges and strata of society and may even work in an academic scenario. If I carry out an motion on the road, I can deal with individuals who have by no means been thinking about up to date artwork and affect them whereas they’re busy having fun with a culinary expertise. Meals is vital to attaining this objective as a result of it attracts a receptive viewers. Meals turns into a repository of artwork that communicates and educates. The recipient interacts with the meals whereas continually receiving details about the work, a slice of up to date artwork, its mechanism of motion and principle. I provoke humour or dismay in folks. If I’ve managed to make a giant impression on them, the sight will typically be conjured up of their minds, all the time linked to the reminiscence of the scenario and the textual content they heard. That is how I get the message of visible artwork throughout to any part of society, even these with no curiosity or affinity for visible artwork.

My performances embrace family actions, like cooking (EAT-ART happenings: sadudaerdna, Sweet Venus, Hello’m Venusz), cake making (Sweet Venus bakes), jam making (Inexperienced Tomato, Widespread Jam, portray ironing and mopping work (NO FOMO, Catalyst of a Housewife).

In 2014, I dressed up as Sweet Venus (Sweet Venus, video, 2011) and I re-interpreted Valie Export’s efficiency, Aktionshose: Genitalpanik (1969). I held a gun fabricated from chocolate in my arms, which melted. I made a cake within the meantime. Sweet Venus’ cake is made with inexperienced tomato jam (CÍM, eat-art taking place 2011, FKSE; MQ-Wien, 2013), particularly a Sacher-cake unfold with ladies artwork (Sweet Venus bakes, eat-art taking place, MQ-Wien, 2013) on which I spat the glaze.

Throughout my portray performances, I recurrently iron canvases with an iron-shaped paintbrush. On this manner, I exhibit the gestures of ironing. Ironing, as a family chore, was a preferred theme with feminist ladies artists of Nineteen Seventies, as an illustration within the works of Renate Eisenber, Sandra Orgel and Valie Export, Birgit Jürgensen, and Latícia Parente.

In 2021, I mopped on the canvas like a cleansing lady, and made invisible work seen with this gesture. This gesture seems as a background in my work. Summary expressionism extremely used blue coloration and the feminine physique as paintbrush (Yves Klein). So it’s not stunning that ladies artists reply with their gestures and their our bodies grew to become a paintbrush e.g.: Lynda Benglis, Shigeko Kubota. Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Care (1969) approached households in another way. She eradicated pigment and made on a regular basis actions seen as a creative gesture with which she drew consideration to those that actually do the housekeeping. Within the 70s, Birgit Jürgensen recurrently drew herself as a housewife. If we take a more in-depth have a look at Birgit Jürgensen’s drawing of flooring mopping, Bodenschrubben, we are able to see that, the artist depicts males as floor-cloth ‘Waschlappen’ who’re squeezed earlier than mopping. Ladies rework family chores into public rituals; they launch their anger.

Widespread Jam happenings are a joint undertaking with Eszter Ágnes Szabó, which anybody can be part of, held yearly on the finish of summer time as a ritual. For the primary time in 2013, we cooked apples harvested within the public house at Art9 Gallery. This was an eat-art, street-art motion which included the normal feminine function of gathering, cooking, and giving meals. By then, apples had grow to be my central theme. I painted my physique, which had expanded after the Venus of Háj’m, with apples in my arms, after Raphael’s three Graces. From there, it was solely a step to look underneath the apple tree because the Blind. With the apples we harvested, we symbolically preserved the unique sin. We mirrored on the occasions of Rirkrit Tiravanija by making a scenario and utilizing the gallery as a kitchen.

Caitlin: There’s a vulnerability and energy in that you just use your physique in efficiency, and likewise visualize it in sculpture, pictures, and portray—typically nude or partially nude. Inform us in regards to the physique and the way it performs a task in your work.

Andrea: Each the canvas and the physique (my very own physique) are projection surfaces by way of which I convey social messages. I present my very own fats physique with all my blemishes, stretch marks and cellulite as a result of I preserve it stunning, and I really feel good in my pores and skin. My very own physique is my mannequin, I paint myself as Venus, and I strip bare in my performances if my message requires it. I’m not ashamed to indicate my physique. My physique is the canvas.

Caitlin: In some ways, a number of of your works seem to make the “invisible” seen –as within the invisible labor of ladies. Do you see that as a part all through a lot of your work? The portray under appears to additionally deal with that idea. I didn’t get an opportunity to see this specific piece in individual however discover it actually highly effective. Might you converse in your collection Galaktotrophusa, which I imagine interprets to Galactotrophus (which means milk-producing or lactiferous).

French, Faculty of Fontainebleau (final quarter of sixteenth century) Portrait présumé de Gabrielle d’Estrées et de sa sœur la duchesse de Villars (Gabrielle d’Estrées and One in all Her Sisters), sixteenth century 37 4/5 × 49 1/5 in | 96 × 125 cm. © 2009 Musée du Louvre / Erich Lessing

Andrea Fajgerné, Complementary Feeding II., 2017, oil on canvas, 100x120cm

Andrea:  Come to my bosom appropriates work of Gabrielle d’Estrees and her sister from 1592, that are within the Louvre. For 15 years I needed to applicable it and right here was probably the most time. My level was whether or not you have got milk or are you able to breastfeed. So the nurses examine your breast within the hospital. Within the background is a inexperienced tile and a photograph damaged by Renate Bertlmann’s Zartliche Berühungen 1-5, 1976. Bertlmann’s photograph jogs my memory of a intercourse scene, I didn’t know what particularly however perhaps condoms, however I additionally thought of the feminine breast, so I selected this photograph as one other mode of inspiration. Breastfeeding was a sexual, erotic expertise for me, and I had an orgasm from many uterine contractions. Within the foreground is a blue desk with feeding bottles, breastfeeding, and different help units.

Caitlin: What have you ever been engaged on most just lately? What are your hopes for the long run?

Andrea:  I used to be in an exhibition with my artist pal Judit Horváth Lóczi. The Title was “Comparable tales” at The Area Gallery of Budapest in February 2023. It was a vital exhibition coping with taboo subjects round motherhood. We outlined seven ideas that had been drawn from our personal expertise however are of common validity (Fixed regret / Nothing actually issues! / Exhaustion, my previous pal! Come and hug me! / Lack of motherhood empathy / If I had been a boy / Psychological load, proliferating mind / Misplaced privateness), that are in regards to the vital issues and unstated facets of our skilled maternal identification and issues, parenting roles and the query of the compatibility of inventive apply and profession, in addition to the traits of “mothering” with out taboos and clichés, deeply psychologizing, self-reflexive and intimate, however with a radically totally different stylistic language.

I’ve so many concepts, and I need to paint loads. I’m making ready for my solo exhibition on the Erika Deák Gallery, whereas collaborating in lots of exhibitions. I hope to grow to be an inspiring artist for different ladies artists and to be proven in New York at some point.