About us

The KONTUR Art Project was launched in 2021 with the goal of creating a new public platform dedicated to the Slovakian art scene. It aims to support Slovakian artists and art workers (art historians, curators, critics, museologists), to map and foster connections between local arts institutions and initiatives, as well as to feature high-quality projects and research.

The project aims to heighten contemporary art’s visibility, as well as to provide — in dialogue with ongoing international discourses — a space for relevant theoretical texts and historical research. Conceived as a forum facilitating the access and circulation of information and ideas, it also aims to go beyond interethnic dialogue in order to promote wider cultural exchanges in the region. A trilingual platform featuring pieces in Hungarian, Slovak and English, it also hopes to reach an international audience.

The platform rests on two pillars: the kontur-art.com platform is primarily dedicated to disseminating information related to contemporary art, while konturarchive.com is an online documentation centre showcasing Hungarian fine arts in Slovakia. Through articles, studies, essays and short films, Kontur-art.com focuses on the local art scene, with occasional forays into the international arena. An online video channel features studio films dedicated to local artists. The page brings together established academics alongside talented young writers and emerging professionals.

Building on historical research in both public and private collections, the konturarchive.com platform makes available to the public a wide-ranging selection of photographs, posters, personal documents, catalogues, correspondence and artworks. By mapping, digitising and inventorying this legacy, we hope to make it accessible and researchable for all.

In the long-term, the project aims to publish monographs and works on the oeuvre of major local practitioners. Slovakia has been home to a number of artists whose trajectories reveal multiple bonds — yet the different national discourses have most often treated each artist as ‘one of their own’, with publications often appearing in only language. This same processes has resulted in the oblivion of certain figures whose case did not fit into these art historical blocs that emerged in the 20th century. By rethinking the link between ethnic bonds and the established art historical canon, our project seeks to fill such a gap.