Szonja Koltay’s work explores the interplay between personal and collective experience. Vulnerability and aggression are central themes in her narratives, often accompanied by absurdity and playfulness—elements that also shape the process of taming these experiences. She investigates the difficult-to-access layers of lived experience, focusing on the intimate sphere: what happens within four walls, or sometimes, quite literally, inside the wall itself—as in her public project Unwalling the wife of Kelemen the Mason.
The installation Teherletétel (Releasing Burdens) invites us to participate in a shared act of release, a symbolic burial of sorrow. “Lay it down, Mama, lay it down—take off your sorrow!” Though our grandmothers once bore mountains on their backs, before we break under the same weight, let us suspend our grief. The objects created for this ritual are shaped by the elusive heaviness of our burdens. The ensemble of works calls for collective action and aims to bring relief and lightness: the burden-sharing cart, the “place it here” rug, the sorrow-stuffed barrel, and the “don’t carry it” pole all encourage us not to push our burdens beyond the limit.
The piece is, in essence, a grief cemetery—a symbolic site that marks both the beginning and end of a communal journey of unloading. It is a space where, through the community and within it, we can let go of the crushing weights that bear down on us. This silent act of “burden-carrying” is a collective female experience, and yet, backs often crack under the strain of solitary struggle. We have a responsibility to support each other in laying down our burdens and to ensure that sorrow does not silence us. Even the darkest experiences must be given voice—we must always create a language, a space, and a context that can guide the burdened back into the community.
Szonja Dorottya Koltay (*1996 in Budapest) is a visual artist. Her work is characterised by an interdisciplinary approach in a diverse range of media. Through her projects, she creates opportunities for collective play. Using performative exercises, she tries to encourage us to practice peaceful mobilization and let our imaginations run wild. She is involved in developing participatory processes with the aim of making creative abilities as widely accessible and attainable as possible. She creates public art installations as well as projects tailored to intimate spaces, exploring fragile experiences or collaborating with marginalized groups. She explores the hard-to-reach layers of private narratives. She focuses on the intimate sphere, on relationships; what is within the four walls, or right inside the wall itself. Vulnerability and aggression are central themes in her narratives, often accompanied by absurdity and playfulness—elements that also shape the process of taming these experiences.
