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At the opening of the duo exhibition with painter Andre Papageorgiu “Where ever you are, surely close to me” on sisterhood.

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At the opening of My Lyme / My Twin at the Balassi Institute in Ljubljana. The exhibition was opened by Bíborka Molnár-Gábor, Director of the Ljubljana Balassi Institute, Edit Szilágyiné Bátorfi, Ambassador of Hungary, Dejan Sluga, Director and Program Manager of Photon Gallery and me.

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I am so happy and honored to have my largest solo exhibition so far in Ljubliana at the Balassi Institute for the full summer. 🙏🏻🎉🎉From 31st May until 7th of September.☺️ Both My Lyme and My Twin series are exhibited.

Photo exhibition by Ora Hasenfratz – Photonic Week Ora Hasenfratz: My Lyme / My Twin The young Hungarian photographer displays two of her latest exhibitions at the Balassi Institute. The pictures introduce us to two personal topics – the disease of the artist and her relationship with her twin sister – therefore they represent a kind of brave self-disclosure. The ‘My Lyme’ body of work documents the story of her Lyme-disease. It is a visual diary of the continuous physical, mental and emotional changes, where every colour and shape has a meaning. Whilst on the surface we see hospital rooms, medicine bottles, body parts and self-portraits, if we look deeper into these moments we see the imprints of the axis of hope, struggle, fatigue, resignation, confrontation, resumption. These emotions depend on progressing or receding in overcoming the disease. (…) ‘My Twin’ series also aims no less than mapping and accepting her feelings. The series introduces us to the world of twinhood with the tools of personal photography. Instead of portraying the close symbiosis - which may be magical, cute or even comical to the outsiders - Ora shows us the sadness and pain of the unavoidable detachment from each other." Edit Barta, curator

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Gábor Pfisztner:  Ora Hasenfratz - ‘Out of Eden’ exhibition keynote speech (March 13, 2018, IntoArt Gallery, Budapest)

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Let me welcome everyone to Ora Hasenfratz’s exhibition, which broadly expands upon, supplements and continues the ‘My Lyme’ body of work presented earlier in the Budapest Project Gallery. [To provide some context: An exhibition is always a special situation – not because it is a significant or commemorative occasion, but because it is a communicative occasion that creates a context for everything that plays a role therein: images, names, titles, people, dialogue. In this situation, images alone cannot be the artwork, the tools or the medium that allow the exhibition to take form; it is the exhibition that makes them visible as works of art. This point of departure will provide a certain meaning to this opening speech, which cannot be separated from this occasion and its participants, regardless of whether they play active or a passive roles.] There is nothing more personal, more tangible than the human body. At the same time, the body experiences certain things that may be external to our consciousness, albeit not our selves. In return, we always internalize and embrace these experiences. Some of them reach us through external stimuli, mediated and transmitted by our sensory organs. Inner feelings reach us – our consciousness – in a similar manner, but through a different kind of mediation, mostly through the nervous system and perhaps most often in the form of pain. There may be other brain reactions that are commonly referred to as pleasant sensations or “flow experience,” but it is not uncommon to feel the opposite: insecurity, confusion, irritability, impatience, etc. We might ask, how do this exhibition’s title and the photographs presented herewith relate to the human body, to this physical experience? ‘Out of Eden’ – that is, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden from the book of Genesis – is perhaps the most famous story in Western culture, albeit most unknown in its historical reality, and it offers the most direct bodily experience in terms of its ordinariness. We could conceive it as a station of an intellectual adventure in which we still are at a decisive point, but we might also regard it as more of an elemental event with respect to our bodies. We accept the mortification, hardship, and suffering of the body, as well as pleasure and joy, in exchange for knowledge. A strange assortment indeed. Getting expelled from the Garden of Eden is a double epiphany. On the one hand, we realize why the Garden was good, why we long for the security of a carefree, blissfully unaware, desire-free state of being. We become aware of what we have lost in return for knowledge. On the other hand, we also know what it is like here on the outside – the experience of being beyond the border, in a sort of boundlessness, and of seeking out the knowledge that will make this alienation bearable; to improve upon that which has been given us; and to know how to “translate” it into something advantageous. This “translation” necessarily carries the possibility and the obligation of understanding (but more about this later). So, how can we turn to our advantage that which we are necessarily and compulsorily obliged to live, experience and feel? This is the case, the situation, when the question arises as to what is simply and exclusively ours – things we believe we possess, with seemingly good reason, beyond the Garden of Eden. We could think of our bodies, which we control with the help of our consciousness. A few years ago, I wrote that the “body [is] that which we would consider ours. And if it is ours, then we own and rule over it. We decide what happens to it and make determinations for it.” But is this really the case? There exists a cutoff point at which this certainty, or at least conviction, disappears. This cutoff point arises when the body begins to work in a different manner from what we know and are accustomed to, a state of being that medicine defines and differentiates as “disease.” This is regarded as a defective or, in a certain sense, dysfunctional operation; as a series of unusual bodily reactions and responses; as an odd alignment. This condition reminds us, or rather awakens us to the fact that although our relationship to our bodies may seem self-evident, it is nonetheless ambiguous. When human will is not enough to influence the functioning of the body, when we are no longer the masters of the situation, then it is not we who make the decisions or give the orders; rather, the body signals that it will work independently of us and, if necessary, interact with its environment. (Of course, in the final analysis this also belongs to us, but it is not so simple.) Even so, it is the human will that can help the mind, help our minds endure the condition in which the (putative? substantive?) hierarchy between body and mind appears overwhelmed. Ora’s response to all this is a form of action that gives, or rather, gives her back the possibility to make decisions, even with respect to her body, rather than being a vulnerable, impotent bystander who subsists and suffers through her body’s behavior and reactions to the given situations, regardless of her will, her decisions and her determinations. Through the distance created and provided by the camera, she assumes the position of an outsider, a bystander, an observer – but without taking a passive attitude toward herself. The process of shaping an image (as well as the resulting image itself) is a visualization, a representation, or a situation that opens an opportunity for contemplation, understanding and comprehension. All of these can be understood as “active participation;” moreover, they can be re-transmitted to the body from outside, affording it a different kind of experience, carving out a different viewpoint. Images transmit between ourselves and the world, according to Vilém Flusser; but this transmission, as I mentioned earlier, carries within it the possibility – or rather the necessity – of “translation” and perception. To create images is to create a symbol, a “translation,” an interpretation or explanation of the world; and the basic structure of symbol-creation is understanding (if not the transmission of a sense of meaning) and the necessity thereof. There is an important contradiction here that creates a certain tension, albeit not explicitly. The tension exists between two poles: On the one hand, the illness, perceived as a condition that must be lived through (suffering, physical and psychological pain); on the other hand, the pictorial, aesthetic display thereof. This is no accident; indeed, it is intentional and deliberate. Ora’s reaction to the situation, conveyed through beauty and the harmony of colors and shapes, clashes with the “illness” and the concept of illness – the temporary imbalance and disharmony caused by dysfunctionality – as inherently frail, repulsive, and ugly. This is her answer to the deficiency that stems from the loss of her own daily harmony, as well as to the condition that can, in its own way, reassemble itself into a kind of system. But – as with the Garden of Eden – its perceived or real qualities are reassessed and revalued. This photographic aesthetic is activated through the technically induced, artificially created “beauty” of its subjects. It visualizes the processes that their creator experiences and lives through, expressed through various objects and items and their positioning and association with each other. Thus what was internal becomes external, allowing others to internalize these experiences in their own way thanks to visual mediation. For those of us who do not have such bodily experiences, these images are perhaps only beautiful/interesting, but at the same time, they are thought-provoking works that allow us to perceive the psychological and perhaps physical states that Ora has endured. These, however, remain only beliefs, only assumptions; they do not become knowledge. For those who have lived and survived as Ora has, these images offer a discursive space in which we can look back on our own experiences from a new standpoint and associate them with radically different visual memories. Moreover, our own experience becomes a community experience, a problem that is at once both personal and communal. Expulsion might have been the type of beginning that was also a closure, an end point. That state where the difference was based on a temporal sequence and a bodily event, not a hierarchy that rests upon moral and mental foundations. This closure puts an end to the innocence of existing in close proximity to one another, a state of being that is governed by blissful ignorance and an inability to make distinctions. A beginning that brings an end to a situation, a beginning that makes it possible to acknowledge the experience of difference, of others, and of otherness. It follows that neither the man nor the woman was alone; the community, with common practices and common experiences, made the loss bearable; and “existing for each other’s sake” offered a perspective on the future. (Today, “existing for each other’s sake” is no longer obligatory, but at least we may – or must – aspire to it.) With these works of art, Ora opens a perspective on the future for many people by raising awareness of the opportunity for community. She gives them a chance to live through their own loss, their own expulsion, and their own “self-conscious awakening” – a chance for deeper understanding and acceptance.

Gábor Pfisztner:  Ora Hasenfratz - ‘Out of Eden’ exhibition keynote speech (March 13, 2018, IntoArt Gallery, Budapest)

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Out of Eden opening reception at IntoArt Gallery, Budapest. 

Exhibition keynote speech by Gábor Pfisztner.

Photo credit: Dömök Noel Szilveszter

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Please make sure to switch on the subtitles for English.

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Some of my works exhibited in Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands.

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I am so grateful for being a part of TEDx and having the opportunity to take the audience on an emotional journey of the twin experience! 🙏🏻👯"My Twin" presentation on the therapy function of photography.  📷Kaszás Tamás

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An article on the exhibition 'Astethics of the Intimate' and 'My Lyme' series in the Hungarian Vojvodina press, Magyar Szó.

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'My Lyme' new photos on the exhibition opening of the 'Aesthetics of the Intimate' curated by Dejan Sluga for the Danube Dialogues Contemporary Art Festival at Gallery of the Rajko Mamuzić Gift Collection. 📷 @aleksandarmiskov

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MY LYME / TWINS Finissage with the curator, Edit Barta.

Photo credit: József Bankó

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MY LYME / TWINS exhibition from May 17th to June 17th in the Budapest Project Gallery (Kossuth Lajos street 14. Budapest, Hungary)

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Opening reception of My Lyme / Twins exhibition at Budapest Project Gallery.

Photo credit: Éva Juhász