NUNCHI – THE POWER OF SILENCE
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The exhibition is open to the public:
30 August 2025 – 5 October 2025
Tuesday – Sunday from 12 to 7 pm
Closed on Mondays and public holidays
Curator: Zoltán Molnár
Opening: 29 August 2025, Friday, 6 pm
Opening speech by Zsolt Petrányi, art historian
Nunchi can be understood as a basic principle of Korean life. It is an intuitive sensitivity that enables one to understand the feelings, thoughts and non-verbal signals of others. Nunchi is essential for maintaining social harmony and for the success of empathy. In Korean society, the interests of the community far outweigh those of the individual. Nunchi facilitates coexistence, work, integration into the community, and heightened respect and consideration for others. It helps one to recognize and understand the subtle layers of behaviour, which makes life simpler for one and others.
Schedule
This exhibition was created in a spirit of dialogue. The photographers whose works are widely spread in time and space share a common desire for thinking collectively. This kind of collaboration results in cooperation in the course of which the different outlooks and concepts gradually conform to each other. The works on view raise questions that are of personal concern to the artists, yet they can be seen in the same space, at the same time.
The photographs of Park Byung-moon, Jang Jong-woon draw our attention to the depths of human existence, social structures and human dignity. They capture the microclimates of Eastern cultures with sociographic precision, presenting situations that, while local, represent universal questions of life. All this is embedded in the process of globalization, where the metropolis—this double-faced beauty and monster—is also taking on new meanings. The images project from the recent past to the near future, tracing known and unknown landscapes between North and South Korea, lingering on the figures who are the heroes or vulnerable witnesses of these spaces.
The works of Kim Mi-kyoung, Moon Sang-wook and Han Hee-joon are visual accounts of their feelings about the planet. They praise integrity and ask whether humans can recognize that they are as much a part of nature as a mountain, a lake, a sea or a tree. The exhibited works make it possible to perceive the fundamental proportions of our world: the extent of earth, water and air, the scale of space. The horizon of our planet extends beyond the boundaries of the visible world—as much in space as in time. The rippling of water, the billowing of clouds, the traces of the earth and the swell of the mountains all speak for the eternal constancy of change.
The artists in this exhibition captured their impressions and feelings quietly and mindfully before speaking out. Performing nunchi, they expressed in images what they experienced in Korea. The exhibition, Nunchi – The Power of Silence is a visual impression of the quiet observers of birth and death.
Zoltán Molnár
photographer
Suggested time to visit the exhibition: 30‒50 min.
Mai Manó House is not barrier-free.
Tickets for the exhibition can only be purchased in person at the venue, as online ticket sales are not available.
Hungarian House of Photography - Mai Manó House
Mai Manó House – The Hungarian House of Photographers – operates in a studio-house built at the end of 19th century, for the commission of Mai Manó (1855-1917), Imperial and Royal Court Photographer. This special, eight-story neo-renaissance monument is unique in world architecture: we have no knowledge of any other intact turn-of-the-century studiohouse. In addition, it serves its original goal, the case of photography again. The aim of Mai Manó House is to advance the development of Hungarian photography and raise photography’s national prestige as a distinct form of art. The institution plays a marked role in the cultural life of Budapest and Hungary, while the organization of exhibitions and programs abroad is getting more and more emphasis within its activities. The reputation of justly world-famous Hungarian photographers of the 20th century offers a great opportunity to regain our old status in the world of photography by the introduction of the generations following those great masters