Interview: Brigit Kovax
Luca Curci talks with Brigit Kovax during FRAGMENTED IDENTITIES 2021, at THE ROOM Contemporary Space.

She was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1991 and now she lives in London, UK. She studied Hungarian folk art and ceramics in college. During this time, she signed up for academic painting and drawing courses where I spent most of my free time. After this experience, she studied fine arts, painting in master’s level at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts where she has been evolving her art through several phases. Studying art history influenced her creative thinking and artworks and opened her perspective.

Luca Curci – What is art for you?
Brigit Kovax – Art is a process that allows me to depict and manifest a period of my life or to translate and interpret aspects of my understanding and conclusion of certain events and experiences in a creative way. It is an additional layer to my life.

LC – What are you currently working on?
BK – I tend to work on a series of paintings to explore the questions that I am interested in. Currently, I am working on and sketching a new idea that I want to be my close future projects. This theme focuses on the cycle of life and the acceptance of our mortality with a particular focus on the “coincidences” that occur in life that we cannot control and cannot avoid or ignore too. This project is backed up with ancient Greek myths.

LC – What is the most challenging part about creating your artworks?
BK – I like the process of painting, right from the research phase. However, it can be a challenge to transform the sketches into paintings. Some paintings look very different on canvas than as a draft and it sometimes ends up being surprising either way.

LC – What is your creative process like?
BK – My focus is mostly on the process of creating and forming the project, bringing it to life step by step, rather than the final result. Though, I respect that the process of the painting is an ever-changing dynamic. I usually work on a series of paintings to explore the questions that I am interested in at the time. In this sense, I focus on more universal themes that derive from life experiences, relationships and in general from my interpretation of life around me. I am interested in universal themes that may affect all of us with no exclusion, such as going through changes, experiencing different emotions, facing mortality just to name a few. I believe that my paintings are pieces of a creative journal reporting aspects of a journey throughout a colourful life in an abstract reality.

LC – Do you use art to express something in particular? Is it your medium of expression?
BK – Some of my paintings were created with the intent to convey the message of colourfulness, and some send the message of calmness, some questions. Some don’t say a word. Some of them are just quiet. From time to time, I like to think that some of them offer a quiet space and relief from everyday life. For instance, sometimes when I am overwhelmed, I feel like I just want to see something still and clear, something tangible or else a bit of light in a painting. Stillness, a lightness that might offer the sense of hope which can mean a lot at times.

LC – We were attracted by your last artistic production, has the artwork presented been created for the festival or as a part of preexisting works?
BK – It is part of a preexisting series trying to explore ‘our inner light’ which has been my focus for a while. In a way, it directed me to the theme of how to depict the ‘inner world’ as well as human completeness. In this sense, human completeness is a route of becoming true ourselves through life experiences, development befriending our inner characters and facing our fearful parts.

LC – Do you agree with our vision of art and what do you think about the theme of the festival?
BK – I think the theme of “The new invisible borders generated by the covid-19” was more relevant than ever. As people were forced to adjust their lives to new habits, connections and spaces, basic human feelings came to the light like never before. The concept of depicting and reflecting “borders” between the soul and the body, the human being and the city, the city and the ground was indeed in line with my recent artistic works. These paintings intend to catch universal, sometimes unrecognisable and uncontrollable, human feelings which are consequences of several social barriers shaping our attitudes and behaviours from 2020 onwards.

LC – What do you think about ITSLIQUID Platform?
BK – Itsliquid Platform has the capacity of organising exhibitions at a diverse group of galleries in several countries in Europe. The artists were supported all along from delivery/logistics tasks to a media appearance. The ‘package’ provided by the Itsliquid group consists of well-organised services which build up artists’ display opportunities and experience properly during the whole exhibition period.

LC – Did you enjoy cooperating with us?
BK – Yes, I did as I had the impression that Itsliquid group fulfilled all responsibilities we agreed on, sometimes even some Ad-hoc requests too. I felt informed from the beginning thanks to the constant communication via emails.

LC – What are your suggestions about our services? Is there something more we can provide to artists?
BK – Right now, I cannot recall anything to be improved.