Budapest Residency
Annie Heckman, Szechenyi Bridge, December 29, 2009
You told me that the end of life looks just like the mouth of a broad tunnel: a project on Budapest’s Labyrinth and Bridges
I’m writing from the second week of my residency at the Hungarian Multicultural Center, directed by Beata Szechy. In the winter of 2005-6, I came to the same residency with many questions, and left with more. This time I decided to return to Budapest to explore its labyrinth and bridges as a way of developing imagery imagining the mythic underworld tunnels of hell and the pearly gates of heaven. Who knew that drawing hell could be so fun?
In considering visual metaphors for death, loss, and the afterlife, I turned to the Budavari Labirintus, Budapest’s underground labyrinth, as a physical starting point. The bridges of Budapest, as well as various grand portals, are helping me produce a different set of elements in these images. Somewhere tucked in my mind from early musings on the potential of post-life existence are two distinct and opposed visions: underground tunnels signifying an uncertain and painful hell, and palatial entryways leading the way to cloudy heights.
To set the verbal side of my mind in motion, I’ve been looking at the writings of Maria Nagy, a Hungarian psychologist who investigated the relationship between age and comprehension of death, most notably in her 1948 study with children and adolescents in Budapest. In many cases these children knew death quite well, and their poetic interpretations of its mechanisms are striking.
Annie Heckman, Wine fountain, Budavari Labirintus, December 31, 2009
Nagy describes the children as creating theories about death to reflect their understandings of the world at different developmental stages. These writings are tied to the labyrinth and bridges only by location, and came up as I was researching a potential collaboration together with (lovely, talented) artist Elise Goldstein. Without these words my project would be floating somewhere between tourism and solitary studio work; they are shifting the way I engage with the images.
I arrived in Budapest knowing that I wanted to make at drawings and a book, and committed to an animation and installation once I arrived and saw the richness of the imagery. After much daytime exploring with nighttime studio work, I’m having a more settled day in the studio. I’ll be leaving a few drawings with Beata in Hungary, bringing some home, and continuing the work on the project when I get back to the states. The animation will join the drawings back in Budapest when it is exhibited later this year.
Check back for some photos, a reading list, and updates on the project (and yes New Year’s is total madness here).
Annie Heckman, Studio table in Budapest, January 5, 2010
The series of drawings I’m developing is specially priced as a fund-raising project to support my two-week residency. 10% of the purchase price will be donated to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. When you purchase a drawing you have the option to receive updates from me about the residency, as well as an e-book giving you a more in-depth view of the project in 2010. New works will be posted for sale as I complete them and work will shipped when I return to the states after January 15. Find the drawings online here.
Tags: afterlife, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Beata Szechy, Budapest, drawings, Elise Goldstein, Hungarian Multicultural Center