Orshi Drozdik

Biography Early life Drozdik grew up in Abda and Győr in Hungary. Her mother lived with her family in Pozsony (today Bratislava) until the end of World War II. In 1945 they were stripped of their property and citizenship by the anti-Hungarian Beneš decrees without compensation and forced to relocate. The government labeled her father a class enemy, like most middle class intellectuals, and his property was confiscated. In 1956, after her father's death, she decided to be an artist. With the support of her mother (who raised Orshi, her sister Ildikó and brother Béla alone), she started to learn formal drawing and painting in an evening drawing study group. Drozdik studied art at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts (1970-1977), in Budapest. She holds an MFA 1977 and PhD in Liberal Arts 2003.

1970–79

Starting in the 1970s and disregarding the patriarchal representation of the female body, she focused on the female point of view; she performed and made art in Budapest at the same time as Marina Abramović in Belgrade. section at the documenta 5, Kassel, 1972 and Joseph Beuys.

Using her own body, she created feminist performance art, From 1975, she exhibited in Budapest and internationally in socialist countries, and worked in association with "Rozsa" (Roses), a young artists' post-conceptual group (1976–78). In 1978, she married Andreas De Jong, left Hungary, lived in Amsterdam, 1979, divorced and moved to Vancouver, Toronto; then in 1980 to New York City. She lived in Vancouver, Toronto and New York City between 1979 and 1991 with the novelist Patrick McGrath.

1980-1999 In the early 1980s, Drozdik worked in association with the artist group Colab. From 1984, she started to work on her decades long project Adventure in Technos Dystopium; deconstructing 18th and 19th century scientific representation of truth and reality. She photographed the displays in European and American science museums, resulting in the series of photographs titled Dystopium Infinete. Adventure in Technos Dystopium derived Popular Natural Philosophy, (1988), Morbid Condition, (1989), Fragmenta Naturae, (1990), and Cynical Reason (1990-91) referencing the Age of Reason. She exhibited at the Tom Cugliani Gallery (1988-1893), 1989, 1991, Age and at the 9th Biennale of Sydney in 1992.

In late 90s she exhibited in Hungarian and Central European institutions including the Ernst Museum in Budapest, the Adventure in Technos Dystopium (1990), 3 by 3 from Hungary (1996) at the Center for Curatorial Studies, New York. and The New Arrivals: 8 Contemporary Artists from Hungary, (2011) and at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels., among others. Her photographic installations of the late 1980s and 1900s are a production of a new Body Space, a project that reflects the video installation of Tony Oursler. In 1983 she produced through the legacy of Andreas Vesalius the drawing series, Dissection of Artaud, Foucalt and Vesalius (1983–84), Drozdik's statement on the link between the dissectional probings of the body and her gender concerns. Ludwig Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest 2001–02, Passion After Appropriation in Museum of Contemporary Art Muzej Suvremene Umjetnosti, Zagreb, and in The Art Pavilion in Zagreb, Croatia, 2002, Individual Mythology - Medical Venus - Young and Beautiful, Municipal Museum of Art, Győr, 2003, The Other Venus, MODEM 2011, Contemporary Art Center. Debrecen, Hungary. In 2006 Drozdik published a book titled Individuális Mitológia, konceptuálistól a postmodernig, (Individual Mythology From Conceptual to Postmodern Gondolat Publishing IBNS 9639567795) a summary of her thoughts, methodology and work process, focusing on her starting point the 1970s conceptual movements in Hungary.

Performance Her works, Individual Mythology (1975–77) and Nude model (1977), comprising performance, photography, offset prints and drawings, were exhibited in Budapest. performance and the Double (1980) in Toronto and Genius (1989) New Museum - Digital Archive in New Museum, New York

Photography Individual Mythology (1975–77), Nude model (1977), Cammon Symbols (1976–77), Blink and Sigh, (1977), Pornography (1978–79), Temporary Coherence (1979–80), Adventure in Technos Dystopium (1984-1996), Manufacturing the Self (1990-96)

Video Individual Mythology, (1977-2014), Individual Mythology: Play It Again, Drozdik (2014), Double (1980), I try to be transparent (1980), Genius (1989), My Mother, Erzsébet Kockás's Strudel (1997), Young and Beautiful, Oshi Ohashi: Young and Beautiful, Confident Cosmetic Line (1997), It's All Over Now Baby Blue (2015), Stripes à la Sol LeWitt, (painting performance with musical accompaniment by Krisztina Megyeri 's composition, Hohes Ufer II (2014)

Installation Adventure in Technos Dystopium (1984–1993) deconstructed scientific representations of truth. For this series Drozdik created a fictional 18th century female scientist, Edith Simpson. Some of the themes she explored were the romanticizing of disease and the taxonomic formalism of Carl Linnaeus.

From 1989 Drozdik used models of her father's brain as part of a sculptural installations.

In 1988, 1989, and 1990, she exhibited at the Tom Cugliani Gallery. Drozdik continued to produce and exhibit feminist work, and deconstructing the patriarchal, scientific gaze, including, in 1986, inventing the 18th Century pseudo-persona of Edith Simpson, The installation Manufacturing The Self, Brains on High Heels (1992), a rubber cast of a brain inserted into a pair of high heels. featured fragments of draperies and naked women from the history of art. A series of exhibitions titled All Over Now Baby Blue were exhibited from 2013 to 2015, Stripes Ala Sol Levitt in 2015. 1984 Adventure in Tecnos Dystopium 2013 It's All Over Now Baby Blue 2013 It's All Over Now Baby Blue, paintings, drawings, performance series 2015 Stripes ala Sol LeWitt, performance, paintings, installation 2018 CellPaintings, paintings 2018 Sensuality and Matter, paintings, drawings 2019 O.D.F.A.M.Orshi Drozdik Feminist Art Museum traveling art museum 2019-20 Medea Insurrection: Radical Women Artists Behind the Iron Curtain

Awards and membership 1976 Kondor Béla Award of the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary 1977 Stipend of the Young Artist's Studio, Budapest, Hungary 1985 Prince Bernhard Foundation fellowship, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 1990 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York, USA 1990 The Gordon Matta-Clark Trust fellowship, New York, USA 1991 Cartier Foundation Fellowship, Paris, France 1993 The Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, New York, USA 1993–95 CAVA, Career Advancement of Visual Artists fellowship, Miami, FL, USA 1994 Austrian Ministry of Culture fellowship, Vienna, Austria 1995 New York Foundation for the Arts, Women Photographers Catalog Project, New York, USA 2001 The Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation scholarship, New York, USA 2003/04 Landis & Gyr Foundation grant, Zug, Switzerland 2003 Munkácsy Mihály State Art Award, :hu:Munkácsy-díj Munkacsy Mihaly Hungary 2015 Széchenyi Academy of Letters and Arts Drozdik is member of SZIMA, The Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Arts