TÓTalJOY Prize 2023/ Rita Süveges
Endre Tót and the Museum of Fine Arts – Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI) established a prize for contemporary artists in 2021. The TÓTalJOY Prize, with a total prize of €10 000, is open to artists with research-based art projects. This year's winner is Rita Süveges, who will give a short presentation of her project plan for the TÓTalJOY Prize, entitled Shout to the Cloud! , after the award ceremony.
The founder of the prize, the artist Endre Tót, who has been living in Germany since the late 1970s, has long been planning to create a form of support for the contemporary art scene. KEMKI, which has maintained a good relationship with the artist for many years, was pleased to accept the idea of the prize and will provide professional support for the realization of the idea.
The name of the prize derives from Endre Tót's conceptual program, launched in the 1970s and based on the concept of joy. His early joy pieces and the actions of the TÓTalJOY series are among the most important works of conceptual art in Eastern Europe.
My "joys" are a reflection of the dictatorial state of the 1970s. I responded with an absurd euphoria of pleasure to the censorship, confinement and repression felt in all aspects of life, although this repression was subtle and almost invisible. I reacted in a very indirect way to the age in which I had to live. With humour, lightness and, in a way, philosophy. I consistently avoided dark colors and drama in my work. Leaving aside the oppressive influence of the ideology of the time, the pleasures were also pleasures of solitude, of being alone. What one can experience under oppression, but also in the greatest freedom.
The TÓTalJOY prize, launched for the second time in January 2023, attracted 38 artists with project plans based on artistic research, in line with the call for entries and the objectives of the prize. The jury of nine, was composed of Hungarian and international members: Zdenka Badovinac (Director, Museum of Contemporary Art (MSU), Zagreb), René Block (curator, gallerist, Berlin), Dávid Fehér (Director, SZM - KEMKI), Tamás Kaszás (artist, winner of the 2021 prize), Emese Kürti (researcher, SZM- KEMKI), Nóra Lukács (Curator, Berlin), Michal Novotný (Head of the Modern and Contemporary Collection, National Gallery, Prague), Berenika Partum (Curator, Berlin, daughter of Ewa Partum and Endre Tót) and Zsolt Petrányi (Head of Department, SZM - Hungarian National Gallery, Contemporary Art Department). In the judging process, preference was given to submissions that respond to changing cultural contexts and contemporary dilemmas.
The jury selected Rita Süveges’s entry Shout to the Cloud! as the winning project proposal of the year. Süveges’s multi-layered project, which reflects on current issues, forms an integral part of her previous body of work. Employing the tools of research-based art, she approaches discourses on our environment that are dominated by geo-engineering and profit-oriented thinking. Her art project explores the cultural-historical, technological, and ethical aspects of the ecological crisis by zeroing in – from a feminist perspective – on the complex phenomenon of ice-damage mitigation, both in its local and regional contexts.
The TÓTalJOY awards ceremony will be held on 24 May at 18:00 with Endre Tót in person. At the award ceremony, Rita Süveges will give a short presentation on her winning project and its plan for the next year.
Location: OMRRK Building C (1135 Budapest, Szabolcs u. 33.)
Date: 24 May 2023 18:00-20:00
Gallery
