2B HUMAN EXHIBITION: PATTI GAAL-HOLMES

‘into the frameless distance to the city of (no) memory’

Analogue photography/film is used to question what it means to go into exile, fleeing into that ‘frameless distance’ that’s so full of promise, hope and possibility. The project centres on Miklos Gaál’s escape from Hungary, where he swam across the Danube, and took a train to Bratislava, finally escaping across the Bratislava/Austria border.

The project also looks at Gaal-Holmes’ father’s earlier escape from Hungary in 1948. In 2018 she travelled, armed with cameras, to Budapest/ Bratislava searching for traces of the past to capture on film.

The project is informed by W. G. Sebald’s search for the ‘nervature’ of the past, Kentridge’s premise relating to the complexity and ever-changing uncertainties of human existence, and Nigerian curator, Okwui Enwezor’s conviction that, ‘it is our job to think historically about the present, since the present is always embedded in the past.’ 

ARTIST TALK : PATTI GAAL-HOLMES