TÓTalJOY Prize

Research based art prize

Project leader: Brigitta Ádi

Visual artist Endre Tót, founder and supporter of the TÓTalJOY Prize, had long been planning to create a form of support for contemporary Hungarian artists.

The prize derives its name from Endre Tót’s conceptual program centred on the notion of joy, which was launched in the 1970s. His early joy pieces and the actions of the TÓTalJOY series are considered among the most important works of Eastern European conceptual art.

The TÓTalJOY Prize, with a monetary value totalling EUR 10,000, aims to provide financial and institutional support to contemporary artists whose practice is research-oriented. Entries to the annually announced open call are expected from contemporary artists who are prepared to present project proposals based in art research, with a view to implementation. In the judging process, preference is given to submissions that respond to changing cultural contexts and contemporary dilemmas.

In response to the first call, announced in July 2021, twenty-seven project proposals were submitted. The decision-making body, composed of Hungarian and international judges, selected Tamás Kaszás’s project entitled Lost Wisdom as the year’s prize-winning entry. In the judges’ view, Tamás Kaszás’s Lost Wisdom, through its background of lived experience, organically aligned with the experimental spirit espoused by Artpool. The panel of judges unanimously agreed that, the project, which employed the vibrant tools of contemporary art, had the capacity to intervene in the life and operations of the archives through collaborative methods, and by transcending the archives’ classical functions and theories.

Katarina Šević’s project proposal entitled Storm in the Archive also received special recognition.

The winning project and the resulting exhibition, which took place in spring 2023, explored a particular cross-section of Artpool’s collection that utilised the art documents held there as a repository of knowledge and ideas that may be marginal from a traditional art-historical perspective, but are nevertheless exciting from an artistic standpoint. Tamás Kaszás’s exhibition entitled Savage Intern was on view at the Hungarian National Gallery from 3 March to 11 June 2023.

In January 2023, a call for applications was announced for the second time, attracting thirty-eight project proposals based on artistic research. A nine-member jury, composed of both Hungarian and international experts, selected Rita Süveges’s project, titled Shout to the Cloud!, as the winner of the year. Süveges’s multi-layered project, which reflects on current issues, was closely aligned with her previous work. Using the tools of research-based art, she explored environmental discourses dominated by geoengineering and profit-driven thinking. Her artistic project examined the cultural, technological, and ethical aspects of the ecological crisis through the local and regional dimensions of the complex phenomenon of ice-damage mitigation, adopting a feminist perspective. The final exhibition of the project, titled Weather Spectre. From Magic to Geoengineering, was on view at the Hungarian National Gallery from October 5 to November 17, 2024.

The 2025 call for the TÓTalJOY Prize received 37 eligible submissions. The nine-member international jury selected Dorottya Vékony’s project, Subfense and Other Soft Defenses, as the winner of this year’s prize.

In her project, Vékony aims to explore boundary situations in which individual challenges are transformed into collective strategies of resilience. These experiences are captured through human relationships grounded in female solidarity, empathy, and acceptance, while also addressing the historical and societal embeddedness of violence against women.

Through a planned experimental documentary film and an object-based installation, she investigates how tools of self-defense and resistance can become forms of shared knowledge and collective action in a world where survival itself is often a political issue. With the support of the prize, the work will culminate in a solo exhibition in autumn 2026.

Further insights are available in the following video.

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