2022 | American Hungarian Library and Historical Society, New York
In his installation, Ádám Albert creates three new artworks inspired by objects that were originally selected to represent the Hungarian Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, “The World of Tomorrow”. By appropriating and transforming these objects, Albert examines how their material and visual qualities are connected to the cultural and political ideas they once represented.
The World’s Fair presented competing visions of modernity, technology, progress, and national identity at a moment of growing political tension. In his works, Albert reflects on how these representations participated in the construction of national identities and on the power relations that unfolded on the eve of and during the Second World War. The original objects therefore become a starting point for considering how visual culture can shape historical memory and popular understandings of the nation.
Looking at cultural and intellectual transmissions across historical time and geographical space, Albert transforms the objects into new sculptural forms that bring together different periods and contexts. Through this process, he creates a poetic narrative in which objects originally made to represent Hungary in 1939 acquire new meanings from the perspective of the present. (2022)
