Katalin Kortmann-Járay

Katalin Kortmann-Járay (1986, Budapest) explores the impact of culture on human perception in her installations, with a particular focus on the intersections of individual and collective experience. Her work brings together the experience of globality and the particularities of attachment to place, tracing these through the lenses of nostalgia and utopia, childhood and adulthood, as well as memory and fiction. Childhood, understood as a multilayered metaphor both literally and symbolically, plays a central role in her practice and forms a recurring interpretive framework within her work.

Katalin Kortmann-Járay and Karina Mendreczky have been working closely together since 2019. They create large-scale, walk-through installations using a spatial collage of various elements. Their cooperated work combines different techniques and materials to create their metaphorically feminine spaces. Both artists exhibit regularly at national and international group shows and art fairs. In 2023, they were jointly awarded the Esterházy Art Prize, a prestigious award for young artists in Hungary, with their works showcased at venues such as Q21 Salon in Vienna, Budapest Gallery, Ludwig Museum in Budapest, and MODEM in Debrecen. Since 2024, they are represented by am projects, following their highly acclaimed debut exhibition, The Long Sigh of the Frog. This year, they also presented site-specific installations in Beijing and at Arsenal Gallery in Poland.