The National 228 Memorial Museum on Saturday opened an art show featuring the works of a Hungarian-American painter whose creative themes usually revolve around human rights activism.
The “Spectre of Freedom: Art of Resistance” exhibition features the selected works of Steven Balogh and is to run until March 23.
While the artist himself could not make it to Taiwan to personally attend the exhibition’s opening due to an injury, he gave thanks to the 228 Memorial Foundation in a pre-recorded video for organizing his show and also talked about the inspiration behind his works.
Photo: CNA
Taiwan shared a lot with his native Hungary in that its peoples have always strived for national independence and freedom, Balogh said.
The artist is expected to visit Taiwan in February next year to create an installation artwork to memorialize the 228 Incident, following which thousands of people protesting the authoritarian Chinese National Party (KMT) regime in 1947 were killed or arrested.
Balogh was born in 1954 in Hungary when the country was still under the shadow of the Soviet Union, and his first foray into art came when he served in his country’s Air Force at the age of 20.
Balogh was inspired to pursue art after witnessing a gruesome injury suffered by a peer in the air force, Taiwanese American Arts Council CEO Luchia Meihua Lee-Howell (李美華).
He trained under various mentors to create artwork criticizing the Hungarian Communist Party, which put him on the radar of Hungary’s authoritarian government. That led him to seek asylum in a refugee camp in Austria in 1986 and become stateless, she said.
Balogh has been living in New York since he was granted refugee status by the US, she said.
Photos of his performance art back in 1979 in Hungary and works from when he started living in New York would be exhibited at the show in Taiwan, Lee said.
Museum curator Lan Shih-po (藍士博) said one of Balogh’s works in Taiwan is a painting of a Hungarian college student who committed self-immolation, which mirrors the history of Taiwan independence activist Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕), who also self-immolated in the name of freedom and free speech.
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