Orshi Drozdik

Orshi Drozdik (born 1946 in Hungary) is a feminist visual artist based in New York City. Her work consists of drawings, paintings, photographs, etchings, performances, videos, sculptures, installations, academic writings and fiction, that explore connected themes, sometimes over an extended period. Through her work, organized into several topics, she explores themes that undermine the traditional and erotic representation of women: Individual Mythologies, Adventure in Tecnos Dystopium, and Manufacturing the Self.

Quotes

It is truly frightening for a young woman artist to separate herself from the patriarchal artistic discourse that she learnt from, that does not support her and that she would like to be part of.
- Secondary Archive^[1]

I rather consider myself as the pursuer of the ideas and artistic movement of Hungarian feminism that started prior to WWI.

I was a follower of the historical feminist movement in Hungary and of the liberating force of the new dance movement which developed within its artistic context, and which I named “free dance”.

In my analysis of the art discourse emerging from the cross-section revealing the interlacement of patriarchal power and knowledge, I was greatly influenced by Valéria Dienes’s feminist writings, who could reconcile her thoughts on psychology, philosophy, and semiotics with the choreography of the art of movement – i.e., the mind with the body, and knowledge with feelings.

I was born immediately after WWII, in 1946. I decided to become an artist at the age of 10, after my father’s death.

When I arrived at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 1970, my intention crystallized.

By holding on to my independence and autonomy, I decided to make art that I felt authentic, art that was based on the recognition that as a woman, as a woman artist, I feel, see, and think differently.

I was alone with my intention and could only find precursors in the historical Hungarian feminism that my mother had passed on to me (in the wake of periodicals such as A Nő és a Társadalom [Woman and Society, 1907‒1913] and A Nő [The Woman, 1914‒1917].

There was no contemporary circle that would support me in these ideas.

But there was patriarchal communist political propaganda: “equality,” “emancipation of women” that voiced the political and social rights of women.

Despite and along with this, censored feminism and the art of new dance, the movement art that pleaded the “divine” body resonated in me when I contrasted the experiences of my “bodily existence” with traditional and patriarchal representation of the woman’s body.
- The statement was written by the artist (2021).^[1]

Quotes about Orshi Drozdik

Orsolya Drozdik (artist Orshi Drozdik) is the first feminist artist in Hungary.
- Art historian László Beke https://secondaryarchive.org/artists/orsolya-drozdik/
Individual Mythology was created in the mid-seventies; the series analyses the representation of the female body in general and the illustration of the artist’s body in particular.
Her work can be found in several major collections such as the Museum Moderner Kunst (Vienna) and the Ludwig Museum Budapest.
Using her own body for representative methods or simply analyzing herself trough mental work, Drozdik reflects herself in all of her projects.
Well aware of the irony of her own situation, Orshi Drozdik can’t seem to escape the construction of herself.
While consistently applying her perspective as a woman, an increased interest in the scientific representation of the body becomes evident in her work.
She denounces and deconstructs science by showing its role in the creation of gender roles and reveals the construction behind the myth of the female identity and the objectivity of science.
By overlaying pictures of famous dancers with Drozdik’s own dance moves and projecting images of Hungarian history on her body, she examines herself as an artist, a women and a Hungarian citizen.
Individual Mythology already displays several characteristics of Drozdik’s way of work.
Drozdik works primarily in series, which can be developed over decades, complementing or evolving from one another.
- Michèle Kieffer, Deconstructing Gender and the Self

References

↑ ^a ^b Orshi Drozdik.

External links

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[Drozdik-1] Orshi Drozdik.

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