TÓTalJOY 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 representing the narrative 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 art research-based project proposals 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, 27 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 project entry. In the judges’ view, Tamás Kaszás’s project entitled 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 attention.

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 response to the second announcement of the call in January 2023, 38 artistic research-based project proposals were submitted. The jury of nine, composed of Hungarian and international members, 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 frost damage control, both in its local and regional contexts.

Events that have taken place: