Contemplatio, 2001

Mixed installation project – 2000 x 9000 x 9000 mm
Epreskert, Parthenon Frieze Room, Hungarian University of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary

This large-scale, meditative installation transposes the visual and spiritual legacy of the digital and post-industrial eras into a space imbued with sacral function. At its conceptual core lies the question of how obsolete technological remnants, industrial debris, and digital peripherals can be recontextualized to generate new layers of meaning within a spiritually charged spatial composition. The materials – plaster, wax, metal, circuit boards, cardboard, plexiglass – are layered and often patinated or partially excavated, functioning as imprints of time, while the spatial structure echoes typologies of the altar, the sanctuary, and the ritual path.

The choreography of the space intertwines the contemplative tradition of Zen Buddhism with strategies of subcultural performativity. The pathways and zones that guide the visitor’s movement reflect an inner journey, where the interaction between body and consciousness becomes a sculptural medium in itself. Hand-drawn symbols, diagrams, archaic constellations, and the aesthetics of low-tech digital devices generate a sacred aura around the objects – proposing a new mythology of peripheral existence within the context of forgotten tools and alternative spiritual systems.

The conceptual proposition of the project lies in its departure from a materially bound notion of sculpture toward a spatial-temporal, motion- and consciousness-oriented process. The installation does not merely present a collection of objects; rather, it articulates a complex visual language that fuses autonomous artistic existence with the collapse of techno-utopias and the deconstruction of religious and social frameworks. Within this intermedial system, the sacred and the discarded, contemplation and noise, the archaic and the digital residue are rendered ontologically equivalent.

Two contemporary responses to Contemplatio, offering interpretive insights into its conceptual foundations and spatial language at the time of its debut.

Endre Lehel Paksi
“Bónyai Barbara.” In M.A. Catalogue 2001: The Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts,
Department of Sculpture, 4–5. Budapest: Rector of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts, 2001.

In her diploma work, Barbara Bónyai has attempted to create a purely functional, communal and religious mode of art.
The ZAZEN Project Art cannot be separated from her life as a Zen-Buddhist nun. It is addressed to her peripheral social class (a ghetto), as she herself puts it: “being socially isolated, a ghetto is particularly in need of the sacrificial power of art”. This is automatically eked out by her disdain of “high art” with all its means and aims. The appearance of the ZAZEN can be localised in sub-cultural music events and, during defending her thesis, in Epreskert (Strawberry Gardens, i.e. the Studios of the Academy), but most of all, in the very body of the artist.
In her view, the flow of ideas between consciousnesses can itself be interpreted as sculpture. The sculptural quality of the installation is thus highly de-materialised (material taken to mean the basic materials of sculpture in the traditional sense of the word). Similarly, during her strictly structured rapping, she defines the sum of movements in space and the activation of bodily energy centres as sculpture.
Barbara Bónyai began her studies in reproduction graphics. Her installations, which she calls film sculptures or rap sculptures are done with a mixed technique, complemented by video and acoustic tapes. They urge contemplation, and attempt to achieve an awareness of our being thrown in the present.

László Hemrik
“An instructive day at the Epreskert: Sculptors’ diploma pieces.” Új Művészet – Art Today, vol. 12, no. 9 (September 2001): 15.

Barbara Bónyai (mentor: György Jovánovics) did not present sculptures in the traditional sense, but rather conceived an installation structured as a complex system incorporating spatial and sculptural elements – or, more precisely, she presented a project entitled Contemplatio. As I wandered through the pathways of the installation space, I felt as though I had entered the hardware of a computer, surrounded by software made manifest in physical form. I encountered numerous punched cards and floppy disks embedded in plaster, alongside peculiar sculptural forms and figures. Undeniably, the environment exuded a distinctive aura, which affected me profoundly. I perceived that I had entered a sanctuary devoted to the realm of informatics, the threshold of which was marked by an altar-like assemblage constructed from computer parts and PC peripherals. At the center of this altar stood a slightly worn plastic foil inscribed with well-known constellations. It evoked in me thoughts of the universe – one that humankind continually seeks to model after itself. However, Barbara Bónyai later reinterpreted and expanded upon these impressions.
I do not recount this merely to document the transformation of my personal relationship with the work, but rather because her thesis reveals that the artist’s oral commentary constitutes an integral part of the initiation – the work itself – termed “rhetoric.” In this way, we learn that what may at first appear as an esoteric cosmos is, in fact, a metaphysical construct born of a spiritual/religious worldview (specifically, Buddhism), reflecting a cosmological state of being. The intricate visual articulation of this metaphysical appropriation finds a complex expression in the visual language of contemporary art, which, in Bónyai’s case, is further complemented by an accompanying rap text. (The project also includes video art, music, and performance elements – though many of these remained unrealized, existing only in conceptual or textual form.) These elements perhaps convey the work’s essence even more succinctly, encapsulated in her own words: “So, this is the diploma; this was the subject matter until now – and now comes the discussion of the idea’s manifestation in the material world.”