Having lived my entire adult life under right-wing authoritarian Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s regime, his colossal defeat at Hungary\u2019s parliamentary elections last Sunday by Tisza, the largest opposition party, still feels hard to believe. Witnessing people in my hometown, Budapest, erupt with joy \u2014 dancing in the streets, strangers high-fiving each other \u2014 makes me hopeful that after 16 years, the Orbanization of culture and the instrumentalization of art institutions to broadcast the regime\u2019s ethno-nationalist, conservative Christian agenda may finally be coming to an end.<\/p>\n
The Hungarian art scene now stands at a watershed moment, much like in 1989 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the task of restoring our institutional ecosystem is immense. Watching this transformation from my second home, the United States \u2014 showing its own authoritarian drift, following a blueprint that feels eerily familiar \u2014 I cannot help but see Hungary as both a cautionary tale of how ideological control can suffocate critical thinking and artistic freedom, and a source of hope that even such deeply ingrained authoritarian regimes can be dismantled.<\/p>\n
When Orb\u00e1n and his Fidesz-KDNP coalition came to power in 2010 with a parliamentary supermajority, he introduced the System of National Cooperation (NER), a new social contract intended to unite the nation through social and economic \u201creforms.\u201d In practice, however, it became a network of Orb\u00e1n-loyalist business elites who directly benefited from these changes. NER expanded rapidly, attaching its tentacles to independent media, successful businesses, cultural institutions, and even universities, while methodically silencing critical voices and dissent.<\/p>\n
Artists, activists, and students during the 12-day occupation of the Ludwig Museum, transforming its staircase into a democratic forum in May 2013 (photo Gabriella Csosz\u00f3 \/ FreeDoc, courtesy Szabolcs KissP\u00e1l)<\/p>\n
As most of Hungary\u2019s cultural institutions are state-funded, changes swept across the field within just a few years. This began with the concentration of unprecedented control in the hands of the conservative Hungarian Academy of Arts, which became a key decision-maker in the allocation of state grants, alongside the appointment of loyalists to museum leadership positions in flagship contemporary art institutions such as the Kunsthalle and the Ludwig Museum in Budapest. For many artists and art professionals, state-run institutions and grants became questionable sites of professional legitimacy and competence. Protests, the occupation of the Ludwig Museum, and discursive events followed, and many curators left their institutions after the new appointments, moving abroad, shifting to the commercial sector, or founding independent initiatives. Museums were increasingly staffed either by those who accepted the status quo or by those who remained out of a sense of responsibility to steward their institutions as best as possible under compromised conditions, operating with a constant sense of cognitive dissonance. Though less visibly today, a shrinking group of artists and professionals continues to boycott the co-opted institutional ecosystem, even as this stance has come to feel increasingly futile in the face of a business-as-usual institutional environment.<\/p>\n
Navigating the field as a young curator, gallery director, and art writer felt like constantly walking on a minefield. Within this fractured system, the Orb\u00e1n regime pitted cultural professionals against one another: those willing to follow the regime\u2019s playbook gained access to grants and opportunities at flashy new museums as well as NER-adjacent private institutions, while those who refused to legitimize the system faced extreme financial precarity and a severe lack of opportunities. A culture of paranoia and fear took hold in the arts, where direct censorship only had to be deployed on a few distinct occasions, as widespread self-censorship became the norm. These tensions mirrored those of society at large, where family members stopped speaking to one another over political differences, and many people were afraid to voice dissent \u2014 some still carrying vivid memories of Soviet-era repression \u2014 out of fear of losing their jobs or becoming targets of the government.<\/p>\n
J\u00e1nos Br\u00fcckner\u2018s \u201cHere and Now\u201c (2019), a participatory work in which visitors contributed to drawing an image of a young Viktor Orb\u00e1n with clocks for eyes spelling \u201cThis Too Shall Pass,\u201d was removed by the Ludwig Museum. (photo courtesy the artist)<\/p>\n
Despite this atmosphere of growing despair and apathy, a few initiatives managed to survive and occasionally even thrive, such as the OFF-Bienn\u00e1le Budapest, the country\u2019s largest contemporary art event. Initially founded to provide a platform for grassroots, artist-run, independent projects, OFF operates free from state funding and the ties that come with it, relying instead on international and private support. Last year, OFF celebrated its 10th anniversary with its largest edition to date, brought to life by our team of 10 curators working outside the state apparatus. The biennale highlighted issues often overlooked by mainstream institutions, amplifying the voices of queer, Roma, immigrant, and other communities targeted by the government or that do not neatly fit into its utopia of a homogeneous<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Having lived my entire adult life under right-wing authoritarian Viktor Orb\u00e1n\u2019s regime, his colossal defeat at Hungary\u2019s parliamentary elections last Sunday by Tisza, the largest opposition party, still feels hard to believe. Witnessing people in my hometown, Budapest, erupt with joy \u2014 dancing in the streets, strangers high-fiving each other \u2014 makes me hopeful that after 16 years, the Orbanization […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":555951,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-555950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=555950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/555951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=555950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=555950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winklersart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=555950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}