Photographer and visual artist Boglárka Éva Zellei was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1993. She received her MA in Photography at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest. In 2016 she studied as a visiting student at Hochschule für Künste Bremen. Besides various Hungarian venues, her works have been exhibited in Kanazawa (JP), London, Vienna, Monopoli (IT), Breda (NL), Ljubjana and Bratislava. In 2018 she earned the József Pécsi Photography Scholarship, she was a finalist of the New East Photo Prize and shortlisted to the Prix Pictet Prize. In 2020 she earned the scholarship of Hungarian Academy of Arts for 2020-2023.
About Untitled – words by Boglárka Éva Zellei:
I am a young East-Central European Christian woman artist. In this ongoing series since 2015, I am collecting impressions reaching me in my cultural environment and shaping my bittersweet relationship with this identity.
I received baptism in the Roman Catholic Church, as a small child I attended a Free Christian congregation with my mother, then we changed for a conservative Calvinist community where I spent my childhood and adolescence years. I carry the memories of these places with me and the fragmented and diverse religious heritage after the end of socialism in Hungary. As a young adult I continued this spiritual quest alone, which also became an artistic one: I am inspired by varied traditions and communities while working on my projects. Eventually I became a member one of them, and currently I am attending non-hierarchical, ecumenical prayer groups.
Spirituality and creation are intertwined in my personal life and also my in connection with society, I visualize the dialogue of these spheres through the pictures. The sensitive, local imagery and churches are telling stories about the historical and cultural characteristics of this post-communist region and also about my inner world. The self portraits are reflecting on this visual heritage and my spiritual journey. This self-examination practice provides me a platform to experiment with my roles to reinterpret my identity over and over.
