Deconstructing "Non-spaces". Inquiries into Contemporary Public Art in Budapest from a Feminist Point of View.

Abstract

This paper examines different public art interventions developed in Budapest, Hungary. My approach embraces a transdisciplinarity between aesthetics, activism, identity and history. Focusing on the social and spatial consequences implied by the actions, the study explores dialogical approaches to the artwork. Accordingly, I analytically examine the concepts of “democracy”, “publicness” and “identity” in their interconnectedness with the projects. Moreover, understanding the city as a conceptualized bounded space structured around gendered binaries, I explore public art in terms of its potential to disrupt the dichotomous approach. As a consequence, my argument deals with the transgression of geographical and corporal binaries as a feminist strategy of resistance. Throughout my study, I reflect on the concept of space as something that does not derive from the physical context, on the hierarchy established between vision and the other senses, and on the conceptualized masculine public sphere. Moreover, I examine the connection between Hungarian social history and the projects. Thus, this study aims to explore how the different interventions redefine public space through horizontal participation, and how audience and the artist(s) reinterpret and redefine paradigms and identities in a fluid and volatile experience of relatedness with the artwork.