Lost in Translation: Andi Galdi Vinko, Zsuzsa Darab, Reka Hegyhati, Andras Ladocsi (January 2018)

LOST IN TRANSLATION
Contemporary photo exhibition in LATARKA Gallery
Opening on January 17th, 2018 at 7pm
Opening speech by curator and art manager Patrycja Rup
ARTISTS: Zsuzsa Darab, Andi Galdi Vinko, Réka Hegyháti, András Ladocsi
“You can't go home again. Your childhood is lost. The friends of your youth are gone. Your present is slipping away from you. Nothing is ever the same.”
― Heraclitus of Ephesus, The fragments of the work of Heraclitus of Ephesus on nature
Lost in translation is a photographic exhibition focused on untranslatable words and emotions. It explores how longing manifests itself within a selection of contemporary photographs of young Hungarian artists. Portuguese term ‘saudade’ expresses the feeling of longing for something or someone you love that is lost. It indicates the knowledge that the object of longing may never return and can be described as the love that remains after someone is gone. The concept of ‘saudade’ is similar to Romanian ‘dor’, which refers to a type of longing for the homeland or the romanticized past. It represents a mixture of melancholy, nostalgia, wistfulness and yearning. Portuguese ‘saudade’ and Romanian ‘dor’ are regarded as some of the world’s most fascinating and enchanting terms. Yet, thanks to the complexity of their meanings and connotations, they are still considered untranslatable as they do not have simple linguistic equivalents.




Language cannot fully describe many nuances of reality but it can easily create visual representations in our head and influence our imagination. Lost in traslation reflects the diverse range of topics and ideas that contributes to contemporary investigations into nostalgia and longing, from childhood and youth sentiments, homesickness to death. Although this is a story of words and feelings that cannot be translated into any other language, young Hungarian artists interpreted them by using the photographic medium as a means of expression. It has to be highlighted that photography has a long association with nostalgia du to the fact that it is highly important in preserving visual history and collective memory. The picture mediates time, immobilizing a moment and reducing it to a two-dimensional representation of an event, person, location or circumstances. In effect, the photograph can never represent the presence since the encapsulated moment has passed and there is no chance to experience it again. Every photograph evokes memories of the past accessible specifically only through this piece.



Each of contributing artists explores different layers of nostalgia captured in words ‘saudade’ and ‘dor’ by filtering them with their own notions and private experiences creating a powerful representation for longings, fears and losses of the young generation. Pictures belonging to their personal narrations give a deep sense of what ‘saudade’ and ‘dor’ are considered to be nowadays: a somewhat melancholic feeling of incompleteness. Specifically they are marked with the kind of missingness that accompanies those who take a closer look into their past recalling all the significant moments, feelings, people and places that won’t be the same again.




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