Hajnal Németh works at the intersection of visual art and music. Her interdisciplinary work includes performances, moving image formats, audio installations and spatial installations. Her works are based on notations, lyrics, poems, or prose fragments, quotes from various sources, as well as the artist’s own texts. Her experimental handling of time, rhythm, and intonation, as well as her playful questioning of structures of meaning often manifest themselves in minimalist interventions in existing material, with which she twists the meaning of a spoken or sung sentence, for example. In her ongoing collaborations with singers, choirs, and actors, she shows how contexts can be arbitrarily constructed and then dissected again.
Hajnal Németh (*1972, Szőny, Hungary) lives and works since 2002 in Berlin. Her work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions at renowned art institutions, including: Museum Ostwall, Dortmund (2023); n.b.k. – Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2021); Ludwig Museum – Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest (2022, 2020, 2016, 2008, 2003); MODEM – Centre for Modern and Contemporary Arts, Debrecen (2019); Centre d’art contemporain, Meymac (2018); The Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam (2017); Kunsthalle Emden (2017); Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2016); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2015, 2012); Tel Aviv Museum of Art (2014); Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art (2014); OSA – Open Society Archives, Budapest (2013); Picasso Museum, Barcelona (2011); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2010); Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (2010); mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; (2009); Temporären Kunsthalle Berlin (2008); MAMC – Musée d’art moderne et contemporain, St-Etienne (2008); The Kitchen, New York (2006); Gropius Bau, Berlin (2005); The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2004); Tate Modern, London (2004); SAM – Singapore Art Museum (2004); TENT, Rotterdam (2002); KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2001); Casino Luxembourg (2001); ICA – Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2001); Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2000).
Her work was nominated for the Nam June Paik Award in 2010.
She presented her installation in a solo exhibition at the Hungarian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2011. In addition, she was featured at the Berlin Biennale in 2001, the Vienna Biennale in 2006 and the OFF-Biennale in 2015.
In 2019 Németh founded YELLOW SOLO, an initiative in Berlin for time- and process-based artistic formats that explore musical systems and references, including works by André Vida, Libia Castro & Ólafur Ólafsson, Ari Benjamin Meyers, Annika Kahrs, Dani Gal, Anri Sala, Arnold Dreyblatt, Olaf Nicolai, Zorka Wollny, among others.
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