Tibor Balogh was born in Fehérgyarmat, Hungary, in 1975 and now lives and works in Budapest. He was the first Roma artist to graduate from the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts. A member of the Free-Pressionists and Gypsy Workshop Association, his works mainly include painting, installation, graffiti and conceptual art.

His graduation work was a series of copperplates inspired by his rural childhood, blended with fragments of his student years spent in Budapest’s 8th district. The series includes the well-known piece Dance of the Old Roma Woman with the Angel.

Balogh contributed two works to the Hidden Holocaust exhibition in 2004 at Budapest Kunsthalle. Untitled is two crypt-like beds made of chimney brick with a Roma Holocaust song played above. The piece not only explores Balogh’s childhood and experiences of abandonment, but also stands as a memento of the Roma people murdered.

Collaborating with Janos Bari, the installation Leaky is a 1 x 1 x 2.3 m-sized booth, with stories, documents and photographs of the Roma Holocaust covering the inner walls. Small test tubes were placed at the booth’s entrance with accompanying instructions on the outer walls. The participants took a test tube, collected their tears in them while in the booth, and were given the choice to sign them. Then they passed them to the artist through an opening, who hung them around the booth as ‘raindrops’. A hundred people took part in the project preceding the exhibition and the event had the mood of a Roma wake. The exhibited piece was reinstalled as Rain of Tears as part of the 1st Roma Pavilion at the 52rd Venice Biennial.

Balogh worked as graphic designer for the Roma magazine Amaro Drom from 2007 until its closure in 2010. In 2010 his poster design received first prize in the Arc Poster Competition.

www.baloghtibor.hu

Exhibitions

2007
Paradise Lost – 1st Roma Pavilion, Venice Biennale, Venice

2013
Free-Professionista Dobbantás – Pintér Gallery and Auction House, Budapest

2014
Balogh/Amaro/Line – Gallery8, Budapest

2016
Balogh Tibor - Konstrukció & Vonal – solo exhibition, SESZTINA Gallery, Debrecen

Source: the artist