Artist Talk with Zsuzsanna Ardó
04.08.2010
The European (British-Hungarian) artist Zsuzsanna Ardó works as a photographer and author in London. Her work includes focus on identities, memories, cultures and intercultural encounters. She has photographed and written about these themes in articles and her books e.g. “CultureShock! Hungary,” which was published worldwide in its 3rd edition in 2008.
Her work has been exhibited internationally, from India to the US, including Creative Realities in the Mind of the Beholder at the European Commission in Brussels, The Urbane Urban in Firenze, and The The Butterfly Flaps Its Wings at the Roma Summit in Cordoba. Currently her Meditation, on Woman and Shadow is on view at the André Kertész Photography Museum in Hungary. Her commissioned work includes photography for Amnesty International, a series of which has been published by the Guardian. Her work also includes photography of the largest European minority, the Roma, for example in Hungary, UK, Italy, Romania, and African refugees in Malta. She serves on international photography juries and curates exhibitions internationally. Most recently she has served as the Chair of the Jury for the EC SEE photography competition, and has curated the collage exhibition, The Spirit of Film, for the British Film Academy (BAFTA), also exhibited in various cinemas in London until the end of November.
During her stay at Deutsche Börse Artist in Residence Program at the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the focus of Zsuzsanna Ardó’s work was the varied, moved and complex identities in the city of Frankfurt – a city characterized by immigrants both in the past and present: today around 40 percent of its residents having some migration background. Her project explores ways of capturing and giving voice to narratives, agencies, fears and hopes that may not be heard otherwise. It also invites both old ad new immigrant and well-established German identities of Frankfurt to have a chance to reflect upon and express the different identities, memories and aspirations they might embody in their everday realities
Talk will be in English