New art exhibit highlights local minority issues

Last week the Ernst Museum mounted a new large group exhibition called Közös tér (Common Space), to address issues of ethnic minorities and cultural identity in the art of the Carpathian Basin. This exhibition features works by artists living within Hungary and in the surrounding countries, including Roma, as well as artists of other ethnic identities.

The exhibition is organized around three main themes: firstly, issues of divergence from the majority ethnicity in particular countries in the Carpathian Basin; secondly, the appearance and significance of dual identities generally; and thirdly, particular minority issues and related issues of identity throughout this region.

The organizers of this exhibition feel strongly that issues of minority art and artists have yet to be addressed adequately within the larger Hungarian art community and its accompanying critical literature. In particular, they are hoping to inspire a larger community dialogue with this exhibit, into such questions as the following: do the living conditions and institutions of current minority groups allow sufficient scope and depth to support an artistic culture? Is that which is born in the minority as art - according to the minority interpretation - art? And what nowadays is the relation of minority to larger mainstream culture, to the national culture and to any notion of universal culture?

There is considerable range among the nearly three dozen artists exhibited here from ten countries. For example, József Benes’s expressionist canvases from Voivodina - part Paul Klee and part Max Ernst - show us the painful and confused displacement of lone figures in an alien geometry. French-Romanian experimental poet-artist Ioan Bunus plays sweetly with Transylvanian themes. Jolán Oláh’s fascination with oil colors has grown out from her illiterate background crafting clay sculptures, before she emigrated from northern Hungary. And architect Péter C. Abonyi crafts strong and striking buildings and objects from solid colors, evoking basic forms such as large sundials, cubes, eggs and crosses.

There is also a larger context in which to consider this exhibition, namely that 2005-2015 has been named the Decade of Roma Inclusion in Europe. According to the official EU report, this Decade grew out of a 2003 conference in Hungary organized by the Open Society Institute, the World Bank, and the European Commission, with support from United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Council of Europe Development Bank, and the governments of Finland and Sweden. At this event, prime ministers and senior government officials from eight countries - Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, and Slovakia - made a political commitment to close the gap in welfare and living conditions between the Roma and non-Roma and to break the cycle of poverty and exclusion.

In Hungary, the action plan addressing this Decade focuses on education, employment, housing and health. It is a tribute to the curators of the Ernst Museum that they are taking such issues to a higher plane by tackling the real underlying cultural and identity issues which may still hinder smooth integration of minorities, particularly Roma, into the Hungarian landscape. And in the process, we all gain by the vibrant display of mastery and expression which this talented crop of artists represents.

COMMON SPACE - The Question of Ethnic Minorities and Cultural Identity in the Art of the Carpathian Basin, runs at Ernst Museum from 10 May - 21 June 2006.

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