81 Tage ohne Welt
Duration 70min, 2020/2024
With the video work 81 Days Without the World [original title: 81 Tage ohne Welt] Magda Stützer-Tóthová attempts to portray "real" motherhood/parenthood. In doing so she follows a feminist practice in art history in which “new images of motherhood with emancipatory potential”[1] are created in art, opening up the discourse by depicting realistic daily life and family situations. The video diary, which accompanies the artist's everyday life with her two-year-old daughter during the pandemic, provides an unfiltered and unsparing view and is reminiscent of the approach adopted by feminist consciousness-raising groups of the 1970s, who by sharing individual and personal experiences embedded them in a structural and political context.
The artist's experience of motherhood during this time, exacerbated by the pandemic, is characterised by a lack of the resource time. Artistic work is only possible during the child’s naptime or requires you to choose between sport for physical well-being or writing for mental well-being. In the video, Stützer-Tóthová poignantly describes her feeling of disappearing – due to the lack of (her own) space and within her role as a mother – as well as the persistent feelings of guilt as constant companions, her endless exhaustion, and how she is unlearning to demand things based on her own needs. (Text: Bettina Siegele)
[1] Sabine Kampmann “Great Mother Artists?“, in KUNSTFORUM International 295, Mutter-schafft. Eine Bestandsaufnahme (April-May 2024), 130.
Foto: Foto: www.aslans.work
81 Tage ohne Welt
Duration 70min, 2020/2024
With the video work 81 Days Without the World [original title: 81 Tage ohne Welt] Magda Stützer-Tóthová attempts to portray "real" motherhood/parenthood. In doing so she follows a feminist practice in art history in which “new images of motherhood with emancipatory potential”[1] are created in art, opening up the discourse by depicting realistic daily life and family situations. The video diary, which accompanies the artist's everyday life with her two-year-old daughter during the pandemic, provides an unfiltered and unsparing view and is reminiscent of the approach adopted by feminist consciousness-raising groups of the 1970s, who by sharing individual and personal experiences embedded them in a structural and political context.
The artist's experience of motherhood during this time, exacerbated by the pandemic, is characterised by a lack of the resource time. Artistic work is only possible during the child’s naptime or requires you to choose between sport for physical well-being or writing for mental well-being. In the video, Stützer-Tóthová poignantly describes her feeling of disappearing – due to the lack of (her own) space and within her role as a mother – as well as the persistent feelings of guilt as constant companions, her endless exhaustion, and how she is unlearning to demand things based on her own needs. (Text: Bettina Siegele)
[1] Sabine Kampmann “Great Mother Artists?“, in KUNSTFORUM International 295, Mutter-schafft. Eine Bestandsaufnahme (April-May 2024), 130.
Foto: Foto: www.aslans.work