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My Country features the works of two artists based in New York, but born in foreign countries: Andrea Dezső is an ethnic Hungarian born in Romania, and Miwa Koizumi was born in Japan.
The exhibition aims to provide some answers to the question: What does the memory of one's homeland mean?
"Your homeland can mean where you come from, where you live or where your parents live, the place where you were born, or where you make your home. In the case of New York artists, the question is more complicated," says Jakab Orsós László, the Hungarian Cultural Center's director.
Dezső's images present a psychological journey. They tell a story out of which life's absurdities want to shine out. Koizumi shows everyday existence through passing objects. The artists' instalations are at once intimate, comical and provocative.
Andrea Dezsö has lived in New York since 1997, She has shown her work at the Jack Tilton Gallery, The New York Armory Show, Art Basel Miami, Flux Factory and Galapagos, Her work has been included in prestigious public and private collections. Community Garden Dezsö's large-scale public art mosaic commissioned by the MTA Arts for Transit has been recently installed in NYC in the Bedford Park Boulevard subway station on the # 4 line. Dezsö's art has been published in The New York Times and on the cover of visual design magazine Print.
Dezsö's illustrated original fiction, "Mamushka" has been published in the art magazine Esopus, and "Names in a Book in Random Order" appeared in the leading alternative comic publication Blab. The literary journal McSweeney's featured a series of short stories she wrote drawing from her experiences growing up in Romania. A book about Dezsö's art, creative process and obsessions titled "Andrea Dezsö Fetish Book" was published in 2006 by Publikum.
Dezsö is an Assistant Professor of Media Design at Parsons The New School for Design in New York City. She has also taught at City College, The Hungarian University of Design, The American Museum of Visionary Art, and the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Miwa Koizumi was born and raised in Japan. Married to a French-American, she primarily speaks French at her home in Brooklyn. Before moving to New York in 2001, she studied in France for 5 years and in Bali, Indonesia with a group of Ethnographic Researchers.
Koizumi received an MFA from Tama Art-University in Japan, and the DNSAP from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where she was honored with the Multimedia Prize upon graduation. Recently she has been studying the pidgin cultures resulting from the clash between the innumerable small tribes present in New York City.
Miwa Koizumi has exhibited internationally in Japan, France, and the USA. Recently at ISE Foundation, Redux Contemporary Art Center, Flux Factory, NGC244, Goliath Visual Space, Corcoran College, Gallerie Caisse des Depots, Chateau d'Oiron, ENSBA, and Parco Gallery.
My Country can be seen at the Hungarian Cultural Center New York from February 15 until April 13. During the exhibition period, a Russian artist living in New York will exhibit at the centre, as well as an American and Israeli guest artist.
