Curator: Maya Anner
Anna Franciska Legát
Hellish Eden
2021-2022
Anna Franciska Legát’s Hellish Eden contemplates the duality and absurdity associated with the Hungarian communist regime in the 1970s and 1980s. Drawing from memories of a past she herself did not experience, Legat constructs symbolic scenes featuring her parents, prompting questions about their feasibility. This particular past and its memories are fundamental in shaping both the artist’s identity and her society. By employing a documentary approach to create staged photographs, Hellish Eden blurs the line between memory, fiction and reality.
Legat’s works ask what Hungary might have looked like when her parents were growing up; cruel compared to the West, humane compared to its Eastern neighbors, surreal from a contemporary perspective, yet seemingly charming in old pictures. Among the artist’s parents’ and grandparents’ generation, talking about the past is often taboo. In collaboration with her parents, Legát visually reimagines and constructs past events to t emphasize the significance of preserving the past in order to better understand the present and shape the future.
In collaboration with the Embassy of Hungary
