Drawing on Books X. // Janka Kovats: Wrong side

In the past, handicraft was part of the rhythm of everyday

life. Today, it is increasingly popular, though its function

has changed somewhat. In peasant culture, such work was

above all an essential everyday skill; today, by contrast, it

often serves as a deliberate counterpoint to a fast-paced,

mechanised way of life built around mass production and

consumption. Yet the essence remains the same in both

cases: a person does not merely use an object, but gives it

meaning through their own labour.

The wall drawing takes as its starting point the Jelenarchívum

story Lunch Break at Work (1992, Inke), in which workers

spent their lunch breaks doing handicrafts for pleasure:

knitting, embroidering and sewing, and teaching one another

as they did so.

In this context, Janka Kováts drew inspiration from traditional

handicrafts, and in particular from the reverse side of

cross-stitch embroidery. On the front, the embroidery presents

an orderly, carefully planned pattern, while the reverse

bears the traces of the making process: the paths of the

threads, their crossings, knots, fastened-off ends and irregularities.

For Janka, this other side – the looser, more distorted,

almost random network of lines emerging on the reverse of

the fabric – became a visual world in its own right.

The initial idea took shape when she came across an old

graduation pouch decorated with cross-stitch embroidery.

Later, looking at cross-stitch pieces made by her and her

mother, she became increasingly aware of all the work, adjustments

and small decisions that go into them, none

of which is visible in the finished piece. The wall drawing

brings this hidden side into view.

The artist does not reproduce a specific piece of embroidery;

instead, she builds a new pattern from the network of lines,

distortions and repetitions on its reverse, creating a looser,

more irregular web. Rather than the finished piece itself, she

reveals its hidden side, the process behind it and the traces

of its making.

Janka Kováts (1999) is a visual artist working across sculpture,

textiles and printmaking. In her work, she explores the

relationship between material, form and structural systems,

developing objects and installations through rule-based processes

and spatial thinking. By combining analogue and digital

design methods, she investigates how controlled structures

and the inherent behaviour of materials work together

to generate form.

The Drawing On Books series is the visual experimental field

of the Museum of Ethnography’s MaDok-program, which focuses

on contemporary phenomena. Within the series, contemporary

artists create temporary wall drawings on the

black chalk wall next to the museum bookstore, drawing inspiration

from the museum’s publications.