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drozdik Orshi Drosdik: "Pornography" (1978) in the exhibition. image copyright Andreas Süß

Orshi Drozdik (Hungary, USA *1946)

Orshi Drozdik has been working with normative representations of the female body as a nude model and in nude drawings since she was an art student at the University of Fine Arts in Budapest in the 1970s. She analyzes the patriarchal structures in the socialist system of art which are contradictory to socialism’s promise of equality between the sexes.

The series "Individual Mythology" (1975–1977) consists of drawings, photographs and performances and was one of her first works. In it, she embodies several famous modern dancers, such as Isadora Duncan, whom she associates with rebellion and liberation. She overlays her own free dance poses with historical photographs and projects images on dancing bodies in live performances as a means of challenging and subverting the female model as a static norm. “I am not the model, the model is not me.”

Orshi Drozdik left Hungary in 1978, working first in the Netherlands then in Canada. She later moved to New York. "Pornography (I Embrace Myself)" (1978/1979) is her first artwork after emigrating. The photographs show multiple body images in hybrid, autoerotic scenes which reproduce the stereotypical image of female desire while subverting it at the same time by portraying it as a historical construct.

 

In the Exhibition:

"Individual Mythology IV & Vii", 1977 / 2001.
"Individual Mythology VI", 1977 / 2001.
"Pornography (I Embrace Myself I & II)", 1978.


In the Video Archive:

"I Try To Be Transparent", 1979, 26:08min,


Links:

Sammlung Ludwig Museum, Budapest