10 Aug On The Road With Sándor Képíró
On The Road With Sándor Képíró
Write it down for hundred times!
Crayon Drawing: wooden board size: 205 cm x 148 cm
Video: length: 2h 30 min in loop with stereo voice
2013
This artwork is like a symbol of penance accepted for the city, the country I live in (Hungary). A country unable to face its past, where the checks and balances have been nullified completely, where the legal continuance of institutions is a meaningless term.
I accept penance for this country, of which I am a citizen and member of, by writing Képíró Sándor (full) name a hundred times on an enormous wooden board. Penance does not have Jewish connotations, references.
I was drawing his name with black crayon with the font called Antiqua.
This type was used for the external Nazi propaganda.
The crayon was chosen because it is a fatty material, as a reference to the grease recycling. Something that dead bodies were subjected to during the Holocaust. I started to write his name for hundred times on a white wooden board. At the same time I was shooting a video during the whole process as a testimony.
At first I thought it is just a practice, but after some days I realized it is more that. My hands were damaged during those days, so the project became a physical forced labor. And I had many debates with friends and especially with my family members. The main issue was the following:
They could not understand the reason why I, a Jewish person, would have to do this work. In their point of view, it is an anti-Semitic person should have do this job, not a Jewish person. But when I finished they understood: Someone has to do or at least start this job.