aliz farkas

Aliz Farkas: Reach 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. However, when these two intersect, topics, free associations, and ideas emerge that would otherwise remain suppressed in a purely intellectual, structured dialogue”.

Text by Emese Molnár, and detail from fohno.com (Aliz Farkas)

Aliz Farkas: I.L. ⤅ Beyond Bare Life, curated by Eszter Lázár, Nagy Edina, 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. According to Irén Jakab, this was important for the analysis because L.I. often drew a patch or a star on the faces in his drawings. What the psychiatrist fails to mention, however, is that these appear on female and male figures alike. In addition to using descriptors such as “primitive” and “clumsy”, the analysis emphasises mannerism and a lack of accentuation in the rendering of lines.

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.

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

Syster Hysteria (Aliz Farkas): Dysphoria

The photo was made for Clara Farkas' exhibition The Good Life Has Ended, 2026

Four-Hand Pieces with Judit Kele, 2025

Interior photo: Christian Farkas

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

By a Thread, video installation about pandemic ⤅ Closed Door, group exhibition, 1111 Gallery, Budapest, 2020

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

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

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 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