Living in a Pulsing Body

Kontur Magazine’s May Exhibition Recommendation

In our May exhibition recommendation, we present a selection of solo and group exhibitions that explore gender-specific human and natural experiences, their possible parallels and intersections, as well as feminist approaches to the body. The featured artists seek responses and potential solutions to current societal questions through personal and collective experience – from Žilina to Košice, Budapest, and all the way to Paris.

First Intermedia Museum III – Tender Force (Prvé múzeum intermédií III – Nežná sila) // Považská Gallery of Art

Žilina, June 25, 2021 – December 30, 2025
Curator: Mira Sikorová-Putišová

The First Intermedia Museum series regularly presents new selections from the gallery’s intermedia and media art collection. The current third edition focuses mainly on works by female artists acquired by the institution between 2010 and 2019.

The exhibition’s concept revolves around gender issues, featuring works that examine the gendered aspects of corporeality and private life. Male artists are also represented, addressing the challenges of traditional frameworks and the status of female artists in the visual arts sphere. The selection partially reflects the diverse approaches of post-1990 feminism and postfeminism.

Edita Spannerová: Sleepless Night (Prebdená noc) // East Slovak Gallery

Košice, April 15 – August 24, 2025
Curators: Zuzana Janečková, Dorota Kenderová

The East Slovak Gallery’s new temporary exhibition features a selection of works by Edita Spannerová – not arranged chronologically or by art-historical categories, but thematically. Central themes include solitude, repressed trauma, the passage of time, rest, relentless caregiving, and the biopolitics of sleep. These are interpreted through the life and work of the artist, who was twenty years old when World War II broke out.

The titular painting Sleepless Night (1959) depicts a weary yet tirelessly caring mother with her sick child – it serves as the emotional and thematic core of the exhibition. Paintings and prints depicting women of various ages approach the main themes from different perspectives, while architectural and installation elements evoke a fragile world poised between dream and reality.

Anna Daučíková: The Grammar of the Gaze // Trafó Gallery

Budapest, May 8 – June 15, 2025
Curator: Lívia Páldi

Anna Daučíková’s first solo exhibition in Hungary presents the work of one of the most influential figures in Czech and Slovak feminist and queer art. The Grammar of the Gaze explores representations of the body and its use as a medium within the intersection of gender politics and feminist critique. The exhibition at Trafó Gallery includes videos, photographs, and performance documentation spanning several decades.

The show is part of OFF-Biennale Budapest, an independent, grassroots contemporary art initiative founded in 2014. The biennale seeks to bridge contemporary art and social issues through community-based practices, operating outside institutional structures. This fifth edition revolves around the theme of safety, unfolding across fifteen exhibitions and forty programs in Budapest between May 8 and June 15, 2025.

Gábor Koós: Avalanche // Művház

Budapest, April 16 – June 3, 2025

In his exhibition Avalanche, Gábor Koós, originally from Lučenec, explores the destructive power of nature and human vulnerability through a distinctively restrained visual language. His monochrome prints convey the overwhelming force of natural elements: surface textures and abstract forms evoke a sense of threat and fragility.

Koós’ approach is unique within contemporary printmaking. His large-format works consist of two parts, but form a single unit: each piece is exhibited as both the plate and the print – one original, one copy – but only one print is ever made from each plate. This practice not only challenges the reproducibility of printmaking but conceptually engages with the relationship between original and copy.

Beáta Méry: The Nature of Waves // Zlatá Koruna Monastery

May 8 – June 1, 2025
Curator: Zsuzsa Lőrincz

Beáta Méry’s solo exhibition draws inspiration from a quote in Laozi’s Tao Te Ching: “The highest good is like water.” According to the exhibition text, light – like water – has a wave-like nature, capable of flowing, swirling, surging, or receding. Human life functions similarly, oscillating between two poles, like the ebb and flow of waves. Méry’s works reflect these inner movements and the currents of the human soul, shaping emotional and psychological fluctuations through visual means.

Constellations: Contemporary Positions from Hungary // Paris-B Gallery

Paris, May 15 – June 25, 2025
Curator: Róna Kopeczky

This group exhibition at Paris-B Gallery features works by eighteen Hungarian artists, many of whom are already known on the international art scene. Through various media, the show addresses environmental and existential issues, as well as cultural-historical and identity-related questions. The artworks frequently engage with social phenomena and reflect on the concept of hybridity.

A central theme of the exhibition is ecocriticism, which redefines the relationship between the individual and society, and between humanity and the natural world. The processes of collective memory and remembrance also play a significant role.

Participating artists: Ádám Albert, Róbert Batykó, Dániel Bernáth, Veronika Csonka, József Csató, EJTECH (Judit Eszter Kárpáti and Esteban de la Torre), Ákos Ezer, Gideon Horváth, Zsófia Keresztes, Katalin Kortmann-Járay & Karina Mendreczky, Bence Magyarlaki, Mira Makai, Tamás Melkovics, Eszter Metzing, Zsolt Molnár, Luca Sára Rózsa, Rita Süveges, Kata Tranker.

Cover image: József Csató: After the Banquet, 2025 (Courtesy of the artist)