Emília Rigová: zredukovaná

The exhibition responds to Emília Rigová’s previous artwork, complementing and shifting it into new interpretations and contexts. The work presented here and the artist’s experience immerses the viewer in the many themes of vanishing, invisibility, overcoming, absence while creating a space where the visitor can become part of the experience.

Emília Rigová (born 1980 in Trnava) is a visual artist from Slovak Republic. For Rigová, an object in the form of an installation or as a performance or a site-specific intervention is a basic element of her art language. Further, she expresses herself through the 2D interface of computer graphics, informed by the fundamentals of classical painting. Concerning the content of her work, she explores the intersubjectivity of emotion modified by a specific socio-cultural environment. The main themes of her works are cultural or social stereotypes, alter ego, Roma identity, and psychological shadows. She is a laureate of Oscar Čepan Award 2018 and a laureate of Roma Spirit 2018.

The presented exhibition is an important and sensitive part of the author’s practice during her return to her hometown of Trnava after a twenty-year absence.

“I always felt apart somewhere in between.”
Emília Rigová

Bári Raklóri is an alter ego created by the artist in 2012, which stood at the beginning of researching her historical context and information about the life of her ancestors. In the family, the author was called Bári which stands for “big”. The other component of the alter ego name is a designation for a non-Romani girl/daughter of non-Romani parents. Raklóri was used in the family when parents wanted to express their satisfaction over the neat outlook of their dressed up children. At such occasions, they used to say to their children: “You are beautiful as a raklóri/raklóro (non-Romani girl/boy).”

zredukovaná is a video documentation of a performance by the artist, who refers to her previous work as part of the “Untitled” series. While working with a photo of herself as her alter ego Bári Raklóri, wrapped in a scarf – a symbol of the traditional clothing of the Romanian Roma – the artist gives this image a new life by returning to it and reinterpreting traditional practices.

The project provides an opportunity to immerse oneself in the processes of disappearance, overcoming, invisibility and absence, where the artist returns to her constant practice of “deconstructed and reconstructed again in the never-ending cycle.”

Starting as an hour-long artistic act, the performance gradually turns into a three-day intensive, gruelling work. We see the process of stitching the space of a photograph step by step with black thread, gradually merging with the blackness of the canvas and space. To an outside observer, this process can be similar to meditation – it absorbs attention, slowly and surely turning the space into a dense canvas of darkness. But for the participant, in this case for the artist, the process of disappearing is a physical test and overcoming, in a sense, a struggle.

In this context, the artist establishes a connection with the traditional technique of hand sewing, recalling a practice that has historically been carried out largely by women.

The artist pays special attention not only to the visual component, but also to the sound: the obsessive scraping of thread on canvas, penetrating the body, reminds us of the painful process of transformation and loss of historical memory leaving behind nothing more than traces.

The contrast on which the artist works in this exhibition is dealing not just with disappearing and merging with surrounding space, but also with beginning of a new cycle, an emergence of new meaning. This process is unpleasant, non-linear, inconsistent and traumatic. The irritating scraping of thread on the canvas is playing an essential role of replacing colour and traditions of space, filling it with blackness, can at the same time be attributed to both symbols of invisibility and rejection and the symbols of creation and emergence of new meanings in a new life cycle.

Is the body impersonal or personal?
Maybe I don’t exist. Do I exist?
What is it like to feel trapped between past and present, between cultural identities?
Is it possible to completely merge with space or does there always remain an element of detachment?

zredukovaná is a statement, an invitation to reflect on personal and cultural identity, on the historical past and future, on fusion and division.

Text: Hanna Palei