We are still here ⤅ concept: Aliz Farkas
Featuring: NF Sándor Bán, Csilla Horváth / HoCSi, Tünde Jordán / Czoboly, Szamócza
A public art project initiated by tranzit.hu
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We Are Still Here is a participatory art project that lends visibility to the subject of housing poverty. The project is based on a concept by Aliz Farkas and involves artists who are homeless or live in housing poverty. The inspiration and starting point were the single-occupant seats on Blaha Lujza Square, those prime examples of hostile design,* and the spontaneous sit-in of homeless people in the underpass of the same square that was carried out in the winter of 1989. The project evolved organically over the course of a month’s group work; the collaboration shaped both its content and its form.
During the workshops, the artists created human figures from waste materials, and complemented them with inscriptions, drawings and paintings—the thoughts of people who have experienced the drift to the margins of society, or were actually born on them. ‘Down, up and all around, there lies infinity,’ says the inscription on one of the figures. Instead of activist slogans that may easily become hollow, the works embody real lives, without revealing them in their entirety. The figures render the experiences on the margins now in a playful manner, as if they were episodes of fables, and now in a dark tone.
The invited contributors are people who are affected by various aspects of housing problems and whose creative works—poems or drawings—have been featured in Fedél Nélkül [Without a Roof] magazine.** During their collaboration, Aliz Farkas applied Fohno,*** a method she had developed earlier, which allowed the group to jointly shape the concept, while getting to know each other’s thoughts and stories.
The project took the form of workshop–based gatherings and was underpinned by the following questions: How can we create an environment in which the invited creative partners can speak in their own voices, instead of us speaking on their behalf? How to make visible the experiences of those for whom ‘outside’ means, or once meant, the everyday space of life? How can we overcome the persistent separation between public space and individual problems?
The project includes public performances, talks and guided walks between September 25 and October 29, 2026. The format ties in with one of the concept’s key messages: since public space holds up a mirror to the issues of society, the works are presented in a dialogic situation—rather than simply being displayed—reinforcing the validity and visibility of each other’s ideas.
As we carry around the figures, we jointly convey the message of those whom we tend to overlook amidst the waves of changes and proposals—those who are still in the square.
Aliz Farkas: I.L. ⤅ Beyond Bare Life, curated by Eszter Lázár, Edina Nagy, Drégely street 19., 2026
This artistic research focuses on works produced between 1923 and 1925 by a person diagnosed with schizophrenia at the Pécs Clinic of Neurology and Psychiatry. Many of the drawings feature a hermaphrodite figure. Instead of taking a medical perspective, I attempted to reinterpret these drawings from a critical point of view informed by contemporary queer-theory.
During his stay he produced numerous drawings, which Irén Jakab psychiatrist connected with texts written by I.L. as well as information in his medical record. In the description of one drawing depicting a figure with breasts and male genitalia, Jakab mentions that L.I. often reported nightmares in which he himself appeared as a hermaphrodite. For the interpretation of the figures that appear in the drawings, an important detail is the description of the patient’s physical features: the documents emphasise that he was pale, with bright red patches on his face.
The same intersex representation can be seen on each of the two identically tailored coats that form part of the exhibited ensemble, but the openings of each garment cover a different part of each drawing, thereby revealing two heteronormative bodies.
The third garment type is based mainly on depictions of the “torpedo woman”, from which I created a somewhat futuristic shell. Alongside the forms themselves, through embroidery and the use of various materials, I incorporated not only L.I.’s visual motifs but also excerpts from his texts as they appear in Irén Jakab’s book Pictorial Expression in Psychiatry (1998). The coats subtly allude to the practice of pathologisation and to the physical reality of the medical environment, incorporating formal elements drawing on clinical clothing and instruments of restraint.
Lecture and workshop with Kate Fisher and Ketil Slagstad at the TAT – Tieranatomische Theater in Berlin
Photos: Barnabás Neogrády-Kiss, Viola Fátyol
Farkas Aliz: The Offering, 2026 ⤅ Color and back – exhibition of the residency program of Imago Eco-Cultural Laboratory, curators: Blanka Bán, Sára Tomcsányi
Videos: Let's Dance (2'20), The Thieves Have Arrived (1'50), The Witch Stood Knee-Deep in the Water (1'56), Killing the God (3'05) – video: Aliz Farkas, sound: Vencel Orosz, performers: Aliz Farkas, Borbála Orosz, Vencel Orosz
We Have Exactly Nine Earths, blanket (polyester), clothes (1 piece: 98% polyester, of which 70% recycled, 2% elastane; 1 piece: unknown material), embroidery (100% silk)
God Umbau, shower curtain (polyester), paper kite (polyester)
The thieves' clothes, made by Balázs Pallagi, 2 pairs of trousers, shower curtain, rug pad, T-shirt, ironing board cover, belt (mixed materials)
The yurt structure was made in 2025 in Ipolytarnóc with the support of Field of Sparks
"This spatial installation titled The Offering experiment aimed at demonstrating how human connections to objects—which have become hollow—can be imbued with new meaning. The work reinterprets everyday life as part of a religious ritual in which every action serves a purpose. According to the artist’s concept, fast fashion products become ritual offerings used to clothe the deities that keep the world in motion.
The four-part video work depicts a symbiosis between transcendent dance and a polluted environment, which is disrupted by the arrival of anarchist “thieves” who oppose the ritual. They craft their tools from the accumulated garments, defying the cult of the plastic deity while simultaneously questioning the meaning of sacrificing objects.
The textile works mounted on the wall, titled We Have Exactly Nine Earths and resembling globes, reflect on the concept of planetary boundaries and the global appropriation of resources. The research was inspired by real ecological and social crises, such as the mountains of clothing in Chile’s Atacama Desert, the Western donation waste known as “obroni wawu” (clothes of dead white people), as well as the Bangladeshi textile workers who rose up after the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse, whose figures inspired the thieves. The project combines perspectives from ecological anthropology with artistic research, highlighting that the fictional ritual of sacrificing objects is a symbolic representation of a real global system of exploitation, the reexamination of which is essential for taking personal responsibility."
Aliz Farkas: Stretch as Far as Your Blanket Can Reach (contributors: Lehel Felföldi, Rebeka Kernács, Zétény Nagy, Borbála Orosz, Anikó Sáfrány, Rita Vöcsey) and fohno.com website (design: Dominik Szabó, Gergő Osgyán) ⤅ Yesterday is Tomorrow, curated by Emese Molnár, RomaMoMa, ERIAC, Berlin, 2026
In the traditional sense, the Hungarian word “fonó” can refer to the place where spinning takes place, the event itself, (“they held a fonó”) or even the person who does the spinning. The term thus evokes various perspectives in relation to space, time, and individuals. Fohno is a meta-space created by Aliz Farkas, which is accessible and open to anyone, regardless of education, social status, or position within (or outside) the art world. Fohno offers alternative ways to build networks. Its most crucial element is the unexplainable – resisting the myth of objectivity, which often occupies space that should be dedicated to genuine attention, communication, and discovery.
The method’s primary medium is textiles, which, beyond embodying the metaphor of a network, also serve as a basis for communal activities. In this sense, the weaving of visible threads of textiles is secondary to the development of invisible threads of human connection.
The World Kept Spinning ⤅ A parable for endings and new begginnigs we don’t know yet, curated by Margarethe Makovec and Anton Lederer, < rotor >, Graz, 2026
Photos: Thomas Raggam
Transformation, 2025 ⤅ sewn by Kovács Bezüge, from oil paintings
Wardrobe ⤅ group exhibition, Textilgyár, 2025
From the left:
Aliz Farkas: Othersider (Transtape Series), 2021–2025
Delaine Le Bas: From Atificial Curiosities To Art (Part I.), 2015-2018
Common Jam: Untitled / to Eszter Ágnes Szabó, 2024–2025
Dreaming Ananda ⤅ Angry Textile, Völklinger Hütte, Völklingen, 2025
"In its softness, its vulnerability, and the closeness of anger, we meet." https://angrytextile.de
Drawing by Romane Holderried Kaesdorf
If the Shirt Fits ⤅ OFF-Biennále 2025
“The unruly arms of Aliz Farkas’s sculptural garments reach many-tentacled outward from singular torsos, including the knitted Stretch as far as your blanket can reach and stitched up If the Shirt Fits (both 2025). Such gestures can invite each of us to step fully back into the fray, constellating in play and out of necessity beyond isolation, in opposition and with non-conformity, in mutation and toward solidarity, and always, in willing coalition and growing unrest. If the shirt of resistance fits, it’s past time to put it on.”
Fionn Meade, Texte zur Kunst
Four-Hand Pieces with Judit Kele, 2025
Interior photo: Christian Farkas
Syster Hysteria (Aliz Farkas): Dysphoria
This project explored the physical and mental experience of dysphoria, revealing the complexity of the inner self and the gender roles mirrored by society.
The photo was made for Clara Farkas' exhibition The Good Life is Over, 2026
Handmade costume by Aliz Farkas and Clara Castro
Photo and development: Viktor Bera
World Model Collection ⤅ May This Feeling Resist the Present, group exhibition, curator: Gyöngyvirág Agócs, Bura Gallery, Budapest, 2025
"In her works Dreamcatcher and Cleanbug, the play on the words “bug” and “to bug” simultaneously refers to both the art-historical topos of the Eastern European artist living abroad in Paris and the euphemistic expression for various mental illnesses. We cannot know whether the bugs are real or part of a hallucination; the motif of cocooning and emergence from the cocoon appears, implicitly or explicitly, throughout all the works." Gyöngyvirág Agócs
Work in Slow Motion (open studios), Cité internationale des arts, Paris, 2024
Artist Exchange Program of Budapest Gallery
"The experiential background of Aliz’s work Ananda 1976 originated during her residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris. By combining her art-historical research with her personal narrative, Aliz created a fictional female character named Ananda, who herself explores the borderlands of artistic identity and the limits of art. Ananda, who emigrated to America as a child after the 1956 revolution and later lived in several European countries, embodies a collage of stories belonging to those who have existed on the periphery of the art world. In addition to the artist’s own persona, her character was inspired by significant predecessors such as Dorothea Tanning, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba, Louise Bourgeois, and Nancy Spero.
Ananda 1976 presents several elements of the fictional artist’s works from the 1970s, examining the relationship between mental struggles, trauma, and the body. The series was inspired by Dorothea Tanning’s installation Chambre 202, Hôtel du Pavot (1973), in which bodies dissolve into the surrounding space, and through their merging with the room, new soft, organic forms come into being. These hybrid shapes intertwine with the interior, creating a disquieting, dreamlike composition that evokes both personal and collective memory, the body, and its transformations. This sense of transience and transformation also reappears in Aliz’s installations, where ritual and anthropological objects are not merely cultural artefacts but also bearers of personal and collective experiences. Just as many female artists of the 1970s explored these themes, they have once again come into focus today.
In Aliz’s – and Ananda’s – work, anthropological and museological approaches reinterpret the role of handmade and ritual objects. Within these installations, traditional tools reflect processes in which they gain significance not only from a historical or ethnographic perspective; once placed in new contexts, they become part of the artistic discourse as well. At the same time, through the character of Ananda, Aliz examines her own inner processes: the traumas of recent years dissolve through the use of materials that are both fragile and soft – sarcophagus-like, symbols of masculinity and femininity – and yet brutal in their evocation of death." Gyöngyvirág Agócs
Ghost Protest ⤅ Demonstration with Candice Breitz, Larissa Peters, Georg Winter, Saarland Museum, Saarbrücken, 2024
"Breitz was set to present TLDR, a video installation about sex work in Cape Town, South Africa, at the museum in 2024, but the show was canceled in November after the artist—who is Jewish—wrote on social media that people should support the liberation of Palestinians(...) She said she believes that democratic rights such as the freedom of expression and political opinion are being eroded in Germany as discourse breaks down over the war in Gaza. " Artnet
Photo: 1. Alexander Karle 2. Saarbrücker Zeitung
Dharma Workshop ⤅ Participation as curator, Ferenc Hopp Museum of Asiatic Arts, Budapest, 2024
Artists and researchers in the project:
Judit Bagi, Ágnes Birtalan, Hajnal Gyeviki, Zita Hazenauer, Haibo Illés, Tatjána Kardos, Martha Kicsiny, Richárd Melykó, Péter Pettendi Szabó, Alexandra Szekeres
"The Dharma Workshop is a series of workshops at the museum, running for the first time this year, where we can explore together the sometimes familiar, sometimes unknown aspects of Buddhism. Led by invited visual artists, the programmes will be experiential, all-sensory learning rather than the classroom-style listening experience." Aliz Farkas
Photos: Péter Tamás Sági
Guided garden tour within the French Rendez-vous aux Jardins program, with Zita Gódorné Hazenauer and Aliz Farkas
FOHNO ⤅ Collaborative textile+performance experiments, 2024–2026 https://fohno.com/
Webdesign: Dominik Szabó, Gergő Osgyán
Just don’t let them know, what I was made from ⤅ Solo exhibition, curator: Anna Zsoldos, Art9, Budapest, 2023
"The title draws attention to the fact that the moment of crisis — the one that provokes, or rather compels transformation — always arises from a rupture between subjectivity and the body.
Behind the words lies the layered experience of what it means when the body, once a dwelling, turns into the object of estrangement. A slip of the tongue smothered in a sigh, echoing one of the central questions of the exhibited works: what does embodiment mean for the subject — its own boundedness, its limits — and how can we understand the interrelation between body and identity, whether the body be human, mythical, animal, or vegetal." Boglárka Balajthy, ÚjMűvészet
Photos: Márton K Takács, Kinga Gárdonyi
Self-purification – Light, colour, dark ⤅ Solo exhibition, curator: Réka Nemere, Epreskert, Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest, 2020
Teach me to fight - felted yarn, seashell, clay, 2026
A hallgatás NEM – Only Yes Means Yes ⤅ Organized by Aliz Farkas, Clara Farkas, Niki Lakatos, Norbert Oláh, Lili Tóth, Bura Gallery, 2026
Series of exhibitions and demonstrations calling for the codification of consent into law, addressing the problem of violence against women. The project was triggered by the public revelation of a rape case at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, which ultimately went unpunished.
About
Aliz Farkas (1997, Szeged, Hungary)
Studies
2024– ELTE Doctoral School of Philosophy, Art History PhD
2022–2024 ELTE Faculty of Humanities, Art History MA
2016–2022 Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Painting MA
Selected Exhibitions
2026 A parable for endings and new begginnigs we don’t know yet (group exhibition, curated by Margarethe Makovec and Anton Lederer, < rotor >, Graz)
2026 Yesterday is Tomorrow (group exhibition, curated by Emese Molnár, RomaMoMa, Eriac, Berlin)
2026 Beyond Bare Life (group exhibition and research project, curated by Eszter Lázár and Edina Nagy, Drégely street 19., Budapest)
2025 Angry Textile (group exhibition, Weltkulturerbe Völklinger Hütte, Völklingen)
2025 Looking for a Place to Hide (opening performance, Parrotta Contemporary, Bonn)
2025 Perem – On the Edge (group exhibition, OFF–Biennále, Bura Gallery, Budapest)
2025 May This Feeling Resist the Present (group exhibition, curated by Gyöngyvirág Agócs, Bura Gallery, Budapest)
2024 Room of Ananda (Open Studios – Work in Slow Motion, Cité internationale des arts, Paris)
2024 Garden of Venus (group exhibition, curated by Zita Sárvári, Apollo Gallery, Budapest)
2024 Uchrony (group exhibition, Studio of Young Artists Association, Budapest)
2023 Just don’t let them know, what I was made from (solo exhibition, curated by Anna Zsoldos, Art9, Budapest)
2022 Best of Diploma+ (best diploma works, exhibition, Profil Gallery, Budapest)
2021 Birth of Roosi (popup group show, Roosi Gallery, Tallinn)
2020 Self-purification – Light, Colour, Dark (solo exhibition, curated by Réka Nemere, Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Epreskert, Kálvária, Budapest)
Curatorial and Research Projects
2025 Training: Creative Acts and Action (performance-research, Günther Uecker Institut, Germany)
2025 Angry Textile Seminar (lecturer at HBK Saar University, as part of the preparation for the Angry Textile exhibition)
2024 (ongoing) FOHNO (experimental, textile- and education-focused community project)
2024 Dharma Workshop (collaborative project with artists and orientalists, concept, Hopp Ferenc Museum of Asiatic Arts, Budapest)
2024 Land of Buddhas | Gandhara. Indo-Greek sculptures of the Ferenc Hopp Museum (preparation of the digital content of the exhibition, exhibition texts, Hopp Ferenc Museum of Asiatic Arts, Budapest)
2024 For Me Paper is Just a Material (group exhibition, curator, Inštitút Liszta Bratislava)
2023 Béla Lajta 150 – The Fate of Buildings (data entry of photo collection, identification of buildings, Kiscelli Museum, Budapest)
2023 I Found Myself Within a Forest Dark (curator, Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest)
2022 Memory/Space. Re-arrangement of the Miklós Borsos Collection (team project of the ELTE Institute of Art History, led by Emese Révész PhD)
Membership
Studio of Young Artists Association
Scholarship, residency programme
2025 Cité internationale des arts, Paris, residency
2024 Cité internationale des arts, Paris, residency (organised by the Budapest Gallery)
2024 Erasmus+, Hochschule der Bildenden Künste Saar, Saarbrücken
2021–2022 New National Excellence Programme (artistic research)
Selected Press Coverage
Meade, Fionn. (2025). If the shirt fits: OFF-Biennale Budapest. Texte zur Kunst.
Li, Peilian. (2025). Following the ants: Conversation with Aliz Farkas. In P. Li, Stay alive! Notes from a bad student (pp. 142–143). Pro Helvetica.
Farkas, Clara. (2025). A Hallgatás Nem – megnyitóbeszéd a Bura Galéria csoportos kiállításán. Artmagazin Online.
Balázs, Kata. (2025, November 22). Wardrobe. Artmagazin Online.
Bódog, Bálint., & Benics, Márk. (2025). Igen, egy intoleráns f.sz voltam veled akkor, és nem ezt érdemelted, és senki sem érdemli meg, hogy semmibe vegyék a saját akaratát. 444.hu.
Papp, Réka Kinga. (2023). Egy éve foglalta vissza a budavári Fidesz a kiállítóteret – azóta sem történt vele semmi. Mérce.
Balajthy, Boglárka. (2023). Meg ne tudják, miből lettem. ÚjMűvészet.
Budha, Tamás (Ed.). (2023). Dinghi. Project catalog.
Martincsák, Kata. (2021). Egyszer volt a Vénusz. Képző Online Folyóirat.
Mészáros, Mónika (2020). Túlbuzgó kísértetek. Képző Online Folyóirat.
Selected Publications
(2025) Kicsi nékünk ez a ház. A népi jelképek és a kortárs képzőművészet összefüggései 1970 körül. Új Művészet, 1, 58–61.
(2024) Etnográfia és „a művész tekintete”. Interjú Frazon Zsófiával és Wilhelm Gáborral, a Néprajzi Múzeum muzeológusaival. Balkon, 6, 36–49.
(2024) Definíciók nélkül. Szelley Lellé kiállításáról. Új Művészet, 12, 13.
(2024, February 20) Nehezen mérhető értékek. Interjú három művésztanárral. Kontur Magazine.
(2023) {trag}stanište. Exhibition catalog, Savremena Galerija, Subotica.
(2023, May 22) A kaptár kerete. Méhek mint művészek, művészek mint méhészek. Prae.
Contact
farkasaliza @ gmail . com
Instagram: @aliz._.farkas
© Aliz Farkas, 2026
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