Tibor Balogh is the first Roma artist to be admitted to, and to have graduated from, the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts. Testifying to a full mastery of his art, his diploma piece, a series of copperplates, blends childhood memories of the artist with fragments from another scene of his life, the 8th district of the capital, which has the highest percentage of Roma population in the city, and which was home to Balogh during his Academy years. After graduation, his first important appearance was at the exhibition at the Mûcsarnok/Kunsthalle, the Hidden Holocaust.

Balogh left the installation he set up in the apse of the building untitled. The cold brick piles and the songs about the Roma Holocaust that hovered about them like a prayer invited a great many associations, and the artist did not want to delimit or control the flow of ideas provoked by the vision. Two bed- sized piles of brick formed the core of the work. The distance between them is exactly the same as in the sleeping quarters of the Tiszadob children’s home, where the artist spent his childhood; the two beds evoked an abandoned children’s room. These beds would never be warm again, not only because those who slept there would never return, but also because they were made of a rigid material, bricks. The brick smokestacks that became the symbol of thousands of Roma deaths, turn in this installation into graves. The complex thought of the work is enhanced by the Holocaust songs, painted above the installation, which throb with endless pain and bitterness.

Balogh made yet another provocative work for the Holocaust exhibition, a booth with the dimensions of 1 x 1 x 2.3 m. Illuminated by a bare light bulb, the walls of the booth were papered with shocking documents, articles and photos dealing with the Holocaust of the Roma and their ongoing discrimination. Stepping inside, it was impossible to ignore the evidence of their harrowing fate, no matter where one turned. Outside the booth, there were small test tubes, with the instructions pasted on the wall. You could take a test tube inside the booth, where you could spend as much time as you liked. You could collect your tears in the test tube, which you could sign if you wanted to. The test tube was to be passed onto a small table through an opening, whence the artist took it, and hung it up around the booth, among the other “raindrops.”

A hundred people took part in the action that preceded the exhibition, and the event had the mood of a Roma wake.

Tímea Junghaus