Orshi Drozdik (born 1946 in Hungary) is a

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

visual artist based in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. Her work consists of drawings, paintings, photographs, etchings, performances, videos, sculptures, installations, academic writings and fiction, that explore connected themes, sometimes over an extended period. Through her work, organized into several topics, she explores themes that undermine the traditional and

erotic Eroticism () is a quality that causes sexual feelings, as well as a philosophical contemplation concerning the aesthetics of sexual desire, sensuality, and romantic love. That quality may be found in any form of artwork, including painting, scu ...

representation of women: ''Individual Mythologies,'' ''Adventure in Tecnos Dystopium,'' and ''Manufacturing the Self.''John C. Welchman, ''Orshi Drozdik Adventures & Appropriation 1975-2001'', Ludwig Museum Budapest, 200

/ref> She is influenced by Valéria Dienes, János Zsilka,

Susan Sontag Susan Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, philosopher, and political activist. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay " Notes on 'Camp'", in 1964. He ...

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian- British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is consi ...

Luce Irigaray Luce Irigaray (born 3 May 1930) is a Belgian-born French feminist, philosopher, linguist, psycholinguist, psychoanalyst, and cultural theorist who examined the uses and misuses of language in relation to women. Irigaray's first and most well kn ...

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish ...

, and

Michel Foucault Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and ho ...

, among others. Her working method: critical analysis of meaning, influenced her contemporaries, her students and later generations of women artists. The art historian László Beke noted in an interview realized by Kata Krasznahorkai in 2017 that “Orsolya Drozdik (Orshi Drozdik) is the first feminist artist in Hungary”.

Biography

Early life

Drozdik grew up in

Abda The American-British-Dutch-Australian (ABDA) Command, or ABDACOM, was a short-lived, supreme command for all Allied forces in South East Asia in early 1942, during the Pacific War in World War II. The command consists of the forces of Austra ...

and

Győr Győr ( , ; german: Raab, links=no; names in other languages) is the main city of northwest Hungary, the capital of Győr-Moson-Sopron County and Western Transdanubia region, and – halfway between Budapest and Vienna – situated on one of ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Cr ...

. Her mother with her family were living in

Pozsony Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approximately 140% of ...

(today

Bratislava Bratislava (, also ; ; german: Preßburg/Pressburg ; hu, Pozsony) is the capital and largest city of Slovakia. Officially, the population of the city is about 475,000; however, it is estimated to be more than 660,000 — approximately 140% of ...

) until the end of second WW, in 1945 they were stripped of their property and citizenship by the

Beneš decrees The Beneš decrees, sk, Dekréty prezidenta republiky) and the Constitutional Decrees of the President of the Republic ( cz, Ústavní dekrety presidenta republiky, sk, Ústavné dekréty prezidenta republiky) were a series of laws drafted by t ...

without compensation and forced to relocate. The government labeled her father, as most middle class intellectuals,

class enemy The term enemy of the people or enemy of the nation, is a designation for the political or class opponents of the subgroup in power within a larger group. The term implies that by opposing the ruling subgroup, the "enemies" in question are ac ...

and his property was confiscated. In 1956, after her father's death, she decided to be an artist. With the support of her mother (who alone raised Orshi, a sister Ildikó and a brother Béla), she started to learn formal drawing and painting in an evening drawing study group. Drozdik studied art at the

Hungarian University of Fine Arts The Hungarian University of Fine Arts ( Hungarian: ''Magyar Képzőművészeti Egyetem'', MKE) is the central Hungarian art school in Budapest, Andrássy Avenue. It was founded in 1871 as the Hungarian Royal Drawing School ''(Magyar Királyi Min ...

(1970-1977), in Budapest.http://www.artslant.com/global/artists/show/47318-orshi-drozdik ''Artist Statement'' She holds an MFA 1977 and PhD in Liberal Arts 2003.

1970–79

Starting in the 1970s and disregarding the patriarchal representation of the female body, she focused on the female point of view; she performed and made art in Budapest at the same time as

Marina Abramović Marina Abramović ( sr-Cyrl, Марина Абрамовић, ; born November 30, 1946) is a Serbian conceptual and performance artist. Her work explores body art, endurance art, feminist art, the relationship between the performer and audi ...

Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; names in other languages) is the capital and largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. Nearly 1,166,763 mi ...

. She searched for meaning and significance in her personal experiences; combining the textual with the visual. From 1975, she created a critical, feminist methodology to investigate patriarchal representation. As a student of the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, and under her birth name, ''Drozdik Orsolya'', she researched and examined 19th and early 20th century academic documents of the female nude-model settings in the

archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual ...

of the academy's library. She photographed and ''"appropriated"'' these photo-images for her concept ''ImageBank''; a semiotic study of patriarchal art history, academic training, -education; an image analysis of appropriated images; projected, manipulated and unmanipulated; these were exhibited: ''NudeModel'' (1976-1977), and ''Individual Mythology'' (1975-1977). The title ''Individual Mythology'' is a reference to Harald Szeemann's ''"Individual Mythologies"'' section at the

documenta 5 documenta 5 was the fifth edition of documenta, a quinquennial contemporary art exhibition. It was held between 30 June and 8 October 1972 in Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hes ...

Kassel Kassel (; in Germany, spelled Cassel until 1926) is a city on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Kassel and the district of the same name and had 201,048 inhabitants in December 2020 ...

, 1972 and

Joseph Beuys Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( , ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism, sociology, and anthroposophy. He was a founder of a provocative art mov ...

. Using her own body, she created feminist

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

, photos, drawings, and installations in order to investigate patriarchal representation. Her methodology, her "feminist conceptual art" continued, in ''Pornography'' (1978–79), a critical analysis of pornographic representation, and ''In Someones Shadows'' (1979), ''Diverting Diagonal'' (1979–80), ''Double (1980)'', and in ''I Try to be transparent (to art history)'' (1980). Later, she amended her methods as critical representations deconstruction of meaning and theories of representation to encompass various fields, mediums and concepts. At the same time, she performed and exhibited photographs offset prints and drawings, address the complexities of political and personal. Exploring the relationship between the visual and the linguistic, thus connecting her concepts as in the Renaissance of the Biblical text, for instance, to images. In the mid-seventies, rebelling against the educational and political systems, she found her voice.Michèle Kieffe
''Orshi Drozdik: Deconstructing Gender and the Self''
theCulturetrip.com. Retrieved 23 August 2014. From 1975, she exhibited in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population o ...

and internationally in socialist countries, and worked in association with "Rozsa" (Roses), a young artists'

post-conceptual Post-conceptual, postconceptual, post-conceptualism or postconceptualism is an art theory that builds upon the legacy of conceptual art in contemporary art, where the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work takes some precedence over traditional ...

group (1976–78). In 1978, she married Andreas De Jong, left Hungary, lived in Amsterdam, 1979, divorced and moved to Vancouver, Toronto; then in 1980 to New York City. She lived in Vancouver, Toronto and New York City between 1979 and 1991 with the novelist Patrick McGrath.

1980-1999

In the early 1980s, Drozdik worked in association with the artist group

Colab Colab is the commonly used abbreviation of the New York City artists' group Collaborative Projects, which was formed after a series of open meetings between artists of various disciplines. History Colab members came together as a collective in ...

. From 1984, she started to work on her decades long project ''Adventure in Technos Dystopium''; deconstructing 18th and 19th century scientific representation of truth and reality. She photographed the displays in European and American science museums, resulting in the series of photographs titled ''Dystopium Infinete''. ''Adventure in Technos Dystopium'' derived ''Popular Natural Philosophy'', (1988), ''Morbid Condition'', (1989), ''Fragmenta Naturae'', (1990), and ''Cynical Reason'' (1990-91) referencing the Age of Reason. She exhibited at the Tom Cugliani Gallery (1988-1893), the Richard Anderson Gallery (1990–95), and the New Museum, 1989, 1991,Age and at the 9th Biennale of Sydney in 1992. In late 90s she exhibited in Hungarian and Central European institutions including the Ernst Museum in Budapest, the Adventure in Technos Dystopium (1990), ''3 by 3 from Hungary'' (1996) at the

Center for Curatorial Studies Founded in 1990, the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College (CCS Bard) is an exhibition and research center dedicated to the study of art and exhibition practices from the 1960s to the present. The Center initiated its graduate program in 1994 ...

, New York. and ''The New Arrivals: 8 Contemporary Artists from Hungary,'' (2011) and at the

Palais des Beaux-Arts The Centre for Fine Arts (french: Palais des Beaux-Arts, nl, Paleis voor Schone Kunsten) is a multi-purpose cultural venue in Brussels, Belgium. It is often referred to as BOZAR (a homophone of ''Beaux-arts'') in French or PSK in Dutch. The b ...

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

., among others. Her photographic installations of the late 1980s and 1900s are a production of a new ''Body Space,'' a project that reflects the video installation of

Tony Oursler Tony may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tony (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters * Gregory Tony (born 1978), American law enforcement officer * Motu Tony (born 1981), New Zealand international rugby leagu ...

. In 1983 she produced through the legacy of

Andreas Vesalius Andreas Vesalius (Latinized from Andries van Wezel) () was a 16th-century anatomist, physician, and author of one of the most influential books on human anatomy, ''De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem'' (''On the fabric of the human body'' ' ...

the drawing series, ''Dissection of

Artaud Antoine Marie Joseph Paul Artaud, better known as Antonin Artaud (; 4 September 1896 – 4 March 1948), was a French writer, poet, dramatist, visual artist, essayist, actor and theatre director. He is widely recognized as a major figure of the E ...

, Foucalt and

Vesalius Andreas Vesalius (Latinized from Andries van Wezel) () was a 16th-century anatomist, physician, and author of one of the most influential books on human anatomy, ''De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem'' (''On the fabric of the human body'' '' ...

'' (1983–84), Drozdik's statement on the link between the ''dissectional probings'' of the body and her gender concerns.

2000

In the years of 2000 Drozdik had major retrospective exhibitions showing different aspects of her work: ''Adventure and Appropriation 1975-2001'' were exhibited at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest - Museum of Contemporary Art, Ludwig Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest 2001–02, ''Passion After Appropriation'' in Museum of Contemporary Ar
Muzej Suvremene Umjetnosti, Zagreb
and in The Art Pavilion in Zagreb, Croatia, 2002, ''Individual Mythology - Medical Venus - Young and Beautiful'', Municipal Museum of Art, Győr, 2003, ''The Other Venus'', MODEM 2011, Contemporary Art Center. Debrecen, Hungary. In 2006 Drozdik published a book titled ''Individuális Mitológia, konceptuálistól a postmodernig'', (''Individual Mythology From Conceptual to Postmodern'' Gondolat Publishing IBNS 9639567795) a summary of her thoughts, methodology and work process, focusing on her starting point the 1970s conceptual movements in Hungary.

Work

Drozdik in her work exposes social issues that are embedded within a cultural system, thus countering a range of representations in regards ''facts and scientific truths'' within the discourses of art, medical, and scientific history.

Performance

Her works, ''Individual Mythology'' (1975–77) and ''Nude model'' (1977), comprising performance, photography, offset prints and drawings, were exhibited in Budapest. In this series, she started to deconstruct the representations of female body based on her original concept named ''Image Bank'', in Hungarian ''Képban elmélet'' (1975), in which she defined her methodology using existing representations to unfold and reinterpret meaning. Inspired by Valéria Dienes, the philosopher and dancer, she was able to link her female point of view to the early feminist movement, that was powerful in Hungary before WWII. A harbinger in the Eastern Bloc, Drozdik focused on the methodology of representation - using the early 20 century “Free Dancer” movements in Hungary as a starting point - to construct a discourse of feminist art. ''The Pornography'' (1978) series was completed in Amsterdam, ''I Try To Be Transparent'' (1980), performance and the ''Double'' (1980) in Toronto and ''Genius'' (1989
New Museum - Digital Archive
in New Museum, New York

Photography

''Individual Mythology'' (1975–77), ''Nude model'' (1977), ''Cammon Symbols'' (1976–77), ''Blink and Sigh'', (1977), ''Pornography'' (1978–79), ''Temporary Coherence'' (1979–80), ''Adventure in Technos Dystopium'' (1984-1996), ''Manufacturing the Self'' (1990-96)

Video

''Individual Mythology'', (1977-2014), ''Individual Mythology: Play It Again, Drozdik'' (2014), ''Double'' (1980), ''I try to be transparent'' (1980), '' Genius'' (1989), ''My Mother, Erzsébet Kockás's Strudel'' (1997), ''Young and Beautiful, Oshi Ohashi: Young and Beautiful, Confident Cosmetic Line'' (1997), ''It's All Over Now Baby Blue'' (2015), ''Stripes à la Sol LeWitt'', (painting performance with musical accompaniment by Krisztina Megyeri ‘s composition, Hohes Ufer II (2014)

Installation

''Adventure in Technos Dystopium''Neray, Katalin, ''Orshi Drozdik Adventures & Appropriation 1975-2001'', Ludwig Museum Budapest, 200

/ref> (1984–1993) deconstructed scientific representations of truth. For this series Drozdik created a fictional 18th century female scientist, ''Edith Simpson''. Some of the themes she explored were the romanticizing of disease and the taxonomic formalism of

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, ...

. From 1989 Drozdik used models of her father's brain as part of a sculptural installations.John C. Welchman
''Art After Appropriation: Essays on Art in the 1990s''
Routledge, 2001, p112. In 1988, 1989, and 1990, she exhibited at the Tom Cugliani Gallery. Drozdik continued to produce and exhibit feminist work, and deconstructing the patriarchal, scientific gaze, including, in 1986, inventing the 18th Century pseudo-persona of ''Edith Simpson'',(1983–88); a woman scientist complete with her own heritage. Her installation series entitled ''Manufacturing the Self'' (1993–97) is a deconstruction of medical representations of the female body. Drozdik's 1993-04 exhibition ''Medical Erotic'', part of the ''Manufacturing the Self'' series, featured a cast of the Drozdik's body alongside photographs of a medical wax-work figure and a fictional journal.Holland Cotter

''The New York Times'', June 11, 1993. The installation ''Manufacturing The Self, Brains on High Heels'' (1992), a rubber cast of a brain inserted into a pair of high heels. Exhibited first in Sydney Biennial in 1992–93.

Conceptual painting series

''Art history and Me'' (1982) she created a new series of paintings titled ''Lipstick Paintings ala Fontana'' (2002–06) in which the surface of canvases are punctured with lipstick. The series of digital prints ''Venuses, Drapery and Bodyfolds'' (2000–2007) featured fragments of draperies and naked women from the

history of art The history of art focuses on objects made by humans for any number of spiritual, narrative, philosophical, symbolic, conceptual, documentary, decorative, and even functional and other purposes, but with a primary emphasis on its aesthetics, ae ...

. A series of exhibitions titled ''All Over Now Baby Blue'' were exhibited from 2013 to 2015, ''Stripes Ala Sol Levitt'' in 2015.

Book

Orshi Drozdik: ''Individuális Mitológia, konceptuálistól a postmodernig'', (''Individual Mythology From Conceptual to Postmodern''), Gondolat Publishing, 2006, Budapest IBNS 9639567795,

Selected works

* 1975-76 ''The line'', etching style animation * 1975-77 ''Nude Model I, II, III,'', series of photos and performances * 1975-76 ''Situation'', series of photos * 1975-77 ''Individual Mythology I, II, III,'', series of performances, photos and photo offset
Individuális mitológia
* 1976-77 ''Individual Mythology'', ''Out of Cage'', performance and photos, offset * 1977 ''Blink and Sigh I, II, III,'', series of performances and photos * 1976-77 ''Common symbols'', series of photos and photo offsets * 1978-79 ''Pornography I, II, III,'', series of performances, photos, xeroxes * 1979 ''On My Beauty'' * 1980 ''I try To Be Transparent (to art history)'', performance, photos * 1978-80 ''In Some One Shadows I, II'', series of photos, xeroxes, drawings, installations * 1980 ''Diverting the Diagonal I, II'', series of performances, photos, xeroxes * 1982 ''Art History and Me'' * 1983-85 ''Biological Metaphors'' * 1984 ''Biological Metaphors'' At the Budapest Galeria,Korner, Eva ''Biological Metamorphoses; Orshi Drozdik Adventures & Appropriation 1975-2001'', Ludwig Museum Budapest, 2001. * 1984 ''Adventure in Tecnos Dystopium'' * 1986 ''The Life of Edith Simpson, Epitome of the Enlightenment, National Genius of Art and Science.'' Orshi Drozdik, New York. * 1986 ''The Hierarchy of Organs'' * 1987 ''Love Letter to the Leyden Jar'' * 1990-91 ''Cynical Reason I, II, III,'' installation * 1993-97 ''Manufacturing the Self: Medical Erotic, 1993, Body Self, 1994, Brains on High Heels, 1992, Nun Self, 1994'' * 1993-2007 ''Lipstick Paintings'', painting series with lipstick * 2004 ''My Life as an 18th Century Scientist'', installation * 2007 ''Venuses: Draperies and Folds of the Body'' * 2009-10 ''Un Chandelier Maria Theresa'', installation * 2011-2012 ''The Other Venus'' * 2013 ''It's All Over Now Baby Blue'' * 2013 ''It's All Over Now Baby Blue'', paintings, drawings, performance series 4* 2015 ''Stripes ala Sol LeWitt'', performance, paintings, installation * 2018 ''CellPaintings'', paintings * 2018 ''Sensuality and Matter'', paintings, drawings * 2019 ''O.D.F.A.M.Orshi Drozdik Feminist Art Museum'' traveling art museum * 2019-20 Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain

Awards and membership

* 1976 Kondor Béla Award of the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary * 1977 Stipend of the Young Artist's Studio, Budapest, Hungary * 1985 Prince Bernhard Foundation fellowship, Amsterdam, The Netherlands * 1990 The

Pollock-Krasner Foundation The Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established in 1985 for the purpose of providing financial assistance to individual working artists of established ability. It was established at the bequest of Lee Krasner, who was an American abstract expressio ...

Grant, New York, USA * 1990 The Gordon Matta-Clark Trust fellowship, New York, USA * 1991 Cartier Foundation Fellowship, Paris, France * 1993 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, New York, USA * 1993–95 CAVA, Career Advancement of Visual Artists fellowship, Miami, FL, USA * 1994 Austrian Ministry of Culture fellowship, Vienna, Austria * 1995

New York Foundation for the Arts The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) is an independent 501(c)(3) charity, funded through government, foundation, corporate, and individual support, established in 1971. It is part of a network of national not-for-profit arts organizations ...

, Women Photographers Catalog Project, New York, USA * 2001 The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation scholarship, New York, USA * 2003/04 Landis & Gyr Foundation grant, Zug, Switzerland * 2003 Munkácsy Mihály State Art Award, :hu:Munkácsy-díj Munkacsy Mihaly Hungary * 2015 Széchenyi Academy of Letters and Arts * Drozdik is member of SZIMA, The Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Arts

Notes

References

External links

Individuális mitológia - Drozdik Orshi performansza 2014.03.19.

Orshi Drozdik at Knoll Galerie , Exhibition O.D.F.A.M. (Orshi Drozdik Feminist Art Museum)

ORSHI DROZDIK ORSOLYA SEJTMOZGÁS

Orshi Drozdik: Installation (Un chandelier Marie Theréze)_Jul 25, 2013

Drozdik Orsolya interjú_Jul 11, 2019

DROZDIK ORSOLYA: CSÍKOK_Sep 17, 2015

Drozdik Orsolya Orshi: Az érzékiség és az anyag_Sep 26, 2018

Orshi Drozdik Retrospective Exhibition Ludwig Museum Budapest 2001/02
{{DEFAULTSORT:Drozdik, Orshi 1946 births Living people 20th-century Hungarian women artists 21st-century Hungarian women artists 20th-century Hungarian painters 21st-century Hungarian painters 20th-century Hungarian sculptors 21st-century Hungarian sculptors 20th-century women photographers 21st-century women photographers Feminist artists Hungarian contemporary artists Hungarian feminists Hungarian erotic artists Postmodern artists Installation artists Multimedia artists Hungarian University of Fine Arts alumni Women conceptual artists Conceptual artists Post-conceptual artists