Female Nature

The exhibition "Female Nature" by Judit Rabóczky is presented in parallel in two spaces - at the Vaska Emanuilova Gallery and at the Liszt Institute - Hungarian Cultural Institute.

The starting point in the works of the Hungarian sculptor is female nature and the female body. 

Seven nude female bodies made of recycled materials are exhibited among the ceramic figures in Vaska Emanuilova's permanent exhibition. The parallel between the two authors with almost a hundred years of distance between them creates a special choreography and rhythm in the museum’s space.

Animated, self-absorbed, detached from the world around them, staring at their reflection in the mirror, these figures are in their own in-between space, where femininity oscillates uncomfortably between the sexually alluring and the menacing. It is as if they are frozen, bent, in flight, in a convulsion, finishing the narrative about the woman started by Vaska Emanuilova. 

The exhibition space of the Liszt Institute – Hungarian Cultural Institute presents the series "The Mysterious Object of Desire" by Judit Rabóczky, in which the stereotypes of femininity are emptied of their content and wrapped in iron armour. Here, the body is missing, but the woman is present again, just as strongly and ambiguously. Delicate lace underwear and corsets clash with the material and its impenetrable durability.

The image of a woman who wears her femininity as a combat protective covering is not new, but in the hands of Judit Rabóczky, it gains the power of a sign both exquisite and multi-layered, touching on many social stigmas that weigh like iron on feminist ideas.

The dialogue between the two spaces and the two female authors traces not only the formal development of contemporary sculpture and the concept of the female body, but also brings these themes into focus, using mostly the contrast in materials, form and messages.