Ilona Németh

visual artist, art professor, and curator

Ilona Németh is a visual artist, art professor, and curator who was born into the Hungarian community in Slovakia. Her work often addresses the themes of minorities, immigration, and other social issues. Recently she has been one of the most prominent voices in the protests against the progressive politicisation of Slovak art and culture by the current government. As a professor she led Studio IN and the international education programme Open Studio in the Department of Intermedia at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava between 2004 and 2019. She has exhibited widely both locally and internationally. Her solo project Eastern Sugar was presented at Kunsthalle Bratislava in 2018. She has held solo shows in Bratislava, Prague, Budapest, Vienna, Helsinki, and Rome, among other places. She represented Slovakia (together with J. Surůvka) at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001. She co-curated the exhibition series Private Nationalism in six different countries (2014–2015) as well as the two-part project Universal Hospitality (2016, Vienna; 2017, Prague).