Orshi Drozdik, I Try to Be Transparent, Factory 77, Toronto, 1980
Orshi Drozdik
I Try to Be Transparent

Orshi Drozdik (*1946, Hungary, USA) 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 analyses the patriarchal structures in the socialist system of art, which are contradictory to socialism’s promise of equality between the sexes. Drozdik left Hungary in 1978, working first in the Netherlands then in Canada. She later moved to New York.

artist's website: www.orshi.hu

In this video documenting a live performance, we see Drozdik’s naked body suspended from the ceiling above pages from art history books littering the floor. “The title of the show and the [...] props on the ground insist on the artist’s declarative struggle to be transparent to the history of art and the precepts of Western knowledge” (John C. Welshman).

Performance: Factory 77, Toronto, 1980

Courtesy Orshi Drozdik

Document media
Video, b&w, silent, 26:08 min

Issue date
1980

Relations
Dóra Maurer (MAU 1)

Tags
gaze, his/herstory, in/visibility