BILLY ALLEN x FRANCISKA LEGÁT // PHOTOGRAPHIC EXHIBITION OPENING @MANYI

BILLY ALLEN

(b, 1998 Bristol, England) is a UK based Photographer who’s currently studying a spring Erasmus semester at the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design here in Budapest. Informality, playfulness and experimentation within the fashion genre is what you’ll find within his personal works, although the clothing is never the main component. Billy will be exhibiting his current ongoing project called ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ which dives into surrealistic compositions, uncomfortable situations, the uncanny and finding beauty in the ridiculous.

https://www.instagram.com/skjuleproject/

FRANCISKA LEGÁT

(b. 1997, Budapest, Hungary) is a Hungarian photographer who’s currently working on her master’s degree at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. Absurdity, irony, and a particular kind of dark humor play an important role both in her personal and commissioned works. In recent years, she’s been dealing with the post-socialist identity, the indirect effects of the socialist regime on her generation, and the differences between Eastern and Western Europe.

The main characters of her ongoing series Melancholy of Freedom are families and individuals from different age groups who left Hungary at different times and for different reasons to carry on living in Berlin. Viewed in a broader context, this series depicts a typical emigration process, with many people choosing to move to a new country decades following the change of the regime; initially in the hope of better opportunities, whereas nowadays the reason of choosing a new country

of residence is due to the ever-shrinking space for freedom at home. However, as the title suggests, emigration is fraught with difficulties, not necessarily and not always fulfilling the promise of the life we want. Therefore she aspires to understand who are willing undertake this simultaneously liberating and melancholic experience, and why and how they do it.

In the photo series, Berlin appears as a symbolic scene: the city of freedom and a metaphor for the contrast between East and West, a Western city where the old communist monuments in their new, constantly changing context are still visible.

https://www.instagram.com/legatfranci/