Madame l’Ambassadeur welcomes Hungarian poet, translator and performer Kinga Toth as a resident at the message salon embassy.
May 16 – June 3, 2022
Kinga Toth (Budapest)
Kinga Toth is a nomad of art, between languages, places and genres. The writer writes her poetry and texts in Hungarian, German and English. The texts are sometimes collages or are incorporated into objects with found materials. Several volumes of poetry, often multilingual, have been published in Germany, Austria, Hungary and the USA. In her poetry and (audio) performances, Dada is an unmistakable influence. Feminism, nature and ecology, resources and healing, caring, love, altruism and activism are recurring themes in Kinga Toth’s texts. Since her 2019 Landis & Gyr residency in a former convent in Zug, the artist has been exploring the nature of the acting nun and “nun art” from a feminist perspective.
For three weeks, the artist lives and works in the 25hours Hotel Langstrasse, moving into a studio directly behind the bar, with a generous view of train tracks and local and long-distance traffic. Above the tracks you can see the new Zollstrasse cooperative, Zurich’s Kreis 5 and Milchbuck. And every day there is a line of people directly in front of the studio window: Unnoticed by most city dwellers, Langstrasse party-people and hip businessmen of Europaallee, the same spectacle takes place here on Robert-Stephenson-Weg, day after day. People line up for hours for free, donated food.
During the last two years in the pandemic, this daily ritual has become established. Sister Ariane, the city-based Catholic nun who cares for people on the margins of society in the Langstrassen neighborhood, organized a free food drive with volunteers during the first lockdown. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, up to 200 people now line up every day, waiting patiently for many hours until food and hygiene items are distributed. Everything is done calmly, respectfully and politely, drug addicts, sans papiers, pensioners, asylum seekers, homeless people and Ukrainian women with small children receive fruits, vegetables, bread or packaged cooked food.
The situation in front of the artist’s studio, the misery in the midst of prosperity and the war refugees cannot be ignored. Kinga Toth writes, she hammers the keys of the typewriter, with a view of the distant world of the train tracks and the queue of people outside the window.
“… ez már
nem kitalált imádság nem ösi siratóének szendvicset
pakolok egyet neked hármat a másikba a szomszéd
autóba amivel átmegyünk váltjuk a nyelvet beszélj
oroszul fiam kérdezd meg hogy van a másik neki
mit pakolt az anyja ugyanakkora-e a lába mint a tied …”*
“… this is not a made-up prayer not an old lament sandwiches
i’m packing one for you three for the others in the neighbour’s car
we drive over and change the language speak
russian my son ask him how the other one is doing
what his mother has packed for him if he has the same-shoe-size …”*
*excerpt from “szendvics / at the sandwich”, English translation by the artist
At the end of Kinga Toth’s residency, message salon embassy publishes a zine with the poem “szendvics / beim sandwich “, written in Zurich, in Hungarian and German.