Opened: 2023
In English

“A work originally made for Júlia Vavra’s 2021 graduation for the Amsterdam SNDO - School for New Dance Development, Artists like me is a frisky farce about getting by as artists in the Western contemporary art world. The piece has been brought to life with dancers from Hungary, presenting fictional personas of “the Eastern European up-and-coming artist”, craving to get discovered by curators, banging the doors of prestigious art schools and institutions to be let in and to gather some capital for their careers.

The piece ironically reflects palpable contradictions of the art world, demanding artists on the one hand to produce critical discourse and also to accept the precarious work conditions and a life-long indebtedness. The creators bring into play the invisible barriers of social mobility within the EU, where the capital has concentrated in big institutions and Eastern Europeanness has become a moderately interesting exotic feature including goulash, palinka or Orban as unique selling points for Otherness.” Zsuzsa Berecz, curator

CREDITS

Performers: Adél Juhász, Balázs Oláh, Csaba Molnár, Júlia Vavra, Veronika Szabó
Edited and filmed by: Júlia Vavra
Advisor: Csaba Molnár
Light design: ​Júlia Mohácsi

Videos which are streamed in the show were created in collaboration with: Adél Juhász, Balázs Oláh, Csaba Molnár, Gergő Farkas, Lili Raubinek, Veronika Szabó.
Edited and filmed by Júlia Vavra.

Music: Axel F - Crazy Frog, Dr Beat - Boszorkányszombat, Julow - track1, track 2, track 3, Machine Girl - The Storm, Oneohtrix Point Never - I only have eyes for you, Ariana Grande - Into you

Special thanks to Ana Vujanovic, Antonella Fittipaldi, Corina Mitrovici, Jelle Haen, Marina Orlova, Milena Weber, Nazar Rakhmanov, Parisa Madani, Pollak Lavinia

|| nudity, smoke,  strobe light, 14+ ||

REVIEWS

“She pokes fun at the cliches of the conceptual turn in dance (the absurd story of a curator recontextualizing the preparation of bread following a Hungarian grandmother’s recipe as an art performance installation), at the bias and exoticization towards Eastern Europeans (“ah, Hungarians, very interesting, oh, they studied in Amsterdam, Salzburg, Brussels, Berlin – they must be gooood”). She makes fun of the local context (“I also want to research and perform in the Performing Arts and Research Training Studios!”) and of the entrepreneurial language which has infiltrated Western universities (by literally reading capitalist slogans from the website of SNDO in Amsterdam). The performance ends with desperate cries “Let me in! Let me in! Let me in!” which are more sad than amusing. The Hungarian nihilistic humor is funny and painful precisely because it’s so true and points the finger at all the pressure points. The line “We love Hungarian artist Marina Abramovic” is probably dedicated to everyone who makes no difference between Budapest and Bucharest (Abramovic is from neither). Orban, who is mentioned in the piece, is only a symptom and product of a structural inequality, very deeply entrenched and well-articulated as “white but not quite” in this text which traces the shift to the right in the former communist bloc back to the fact that Eastern Europeans are in a permanent process of catching up with the West but only on the condition of failure. In one of the many reworkings of the image online the skin color of the people left outside darkens – they become brown. In a version probably yet to come the platforms they use to peek into the playing field are digital social media platforms which serve as storefronts presenting all the possible lifestyles for purchase on the other side of the wall/screen.”
Yasen Vasilev, Springback Magazine

TOURS & FESTIVALS

SNDO-School for New Dance Development Graduation Festival, Amsterdam (NL), 2021
Batârd Festival at Beursschowbeurg, Brussels (BE), 2023

Júlia Vavra

“I am originally from Hungary but based in New York and mostly traveling between Amsterdam, Berlin and Brussels. 
As a freelance dancer, fine artist, but sort of an interdisciplinary artist, choreographer, performer, stage designer, light designer, media designer, person in charge of the scenography and the costumes, working with fine arts and cinema - I’m immensely interested in creation.
I have a strong background in ballet, Hungarian folk dance, modern dance, urban, butoh, urban butoh, floorwork, shiatsu, capoeira, modern running, folk yoga, somatic disco, radical stretching, fine arts, philosophy, historical linguistics and improvisation. By mixing all these styles I am experimenting with a movement practice where the body falls into a hybrid, unrecognizable, abstract, and fully unnecessary motion. 
It is quite an irregular approach.
I am not really sure where I am at the moment as an artist, especially at this time..
It's hard.  It is hard to define exactly what I am doing, but I am trying to condense it into one package - if you allow me to say that; 
I just love to create. I am into creation and creativity and creating the creation and creating the creativity, creating the space for creativity and creation.
I love being on stage!
I live for that.
I need need need need need confirmation.
Although I am not a showgirl! NONONO,
I am a Contemporary Artist. Contemporary art for me means that you are in a relevant connection with the surroundings, with nature, with the people on a sociological, political, and on a psychotronical and psychological level as well. You are in connection with the whole thing.
The whole!
And putting things in boxes or categorizing them for me is like putting a pig in a box, and I am not a box, I mean, I am not a pig. I am a bird. And the bird flies and goes and goes and flies and goes and swims and goes to the water and jumps and fire and bird and water and earth and soul and earth and soul and earth and soul and fire, they are like stars!
Stardust!
more about
my work 
my work
my work 
my work
My work 
is MINE!!
I refuse self-purposed art-making.
And first and foremost, I do this to bring change!”

CONTACT

Anikó Rácz 
racz@sinarts.org 
+36.30.525.15.51
www.sinarts.org 

Vavra Júlia  
vavrajulcsi@gmail.com 

Facebook ▷▷ julia.vavra.7
Instagram ▷▷ vavrajulia

SUPPORTERS

Batârd Festival, Sín Arts Centre, SNDO-School for New Dance Development, Workshop Foundation Budapest