Németh’s new solo exhibition, entitled WHITE SONG – Among Others is a reference to Roy Harper’s song from 1970 I Hate the White Man. The white British male songwriter’s self-critical attitude inspired Németh, who has already manipulated other pop cultural phenomena with small visual and textual modifications. Hajnal Németh is generally interested in creating political and critical tools out of pop culture with the help of irony and humor. With the re-editing of Harper’s song and the addition of new colors into the text like red, yellow and black, the work destabilizes and abstracts the narrative of human classification based on skin color. This tiny modification, which is not a heavy critical tool still becomes a very important feature for the artist, who is becoming more and more political in her oeuvre.

The newest works to be seen at the exhibition, which made their debut at the previous exhibition of the artist in 2016 at Galerie Ebensperger create a connection with previously important genres like photos and wallpapers, which were dominant in the early works of the artist. Beside White Song photo series Németh creates remixes in forms of digital collages out of classical LP covers, which with their new titles and colors create a new deeper critical context for the exhibition.

The exhibition is also the premiere of the musical film Work Song – As Time Goes By and the show is also an organic continuation of Németh’ performative praxis, which integrates different genres of music into contemporary art. The 70 minutes long Work Song video simulates an audition situation, which is partly inspired by Milos Forman’s 1971 film Taking Off. The narrative of the video unfolds through 13 acts with 13 iconic songs.

Courtesy of the artist and Trafó Galéria
Photocredit Miklós Surányi