Dora Benyo

Through video, performance and painting, Benyó uses her own genealogy to speak of censorship and authority in Hungary during the Soviet era. From a personal quest for belonging, she searches for traces left by dictatorship on her family, and questions how families, institutions and society processes the Eastern European dictatorial past, using the position of the eternal newcomer, existing between two worlds. For her paintings she turns around the canvas. The hidden scene is from when the statue of Stalin was toppled during the Hungarian revolution. As a child she was told that her grandfather was involved and so she looks for his face in photos from that time. By showing the backside of the painting, Dóra censors herself and the first brushstrokes come to the foreground, which she sometimes accentuates. The action of turning around the canvas depicts how our personal and collective memories change over time. The cotton is the filter of the image: the filter of Dóra's story.