I am a painter, most days. (Others, I am a tile layer, a writer, or an unrigorous academic.) My compositions layer historical photographs with decorative patterns, scrapbooking the past, research, and my own identity. This collage-like structure mirrors the scraps of women’s internal lives recorded in visual and written archives. It also reflects an intersectional way of understanding history and memory: fractured, nonlinear, and echoing.
The patterns I paint are pulled from a personal archive of my own homes, Hungarian architecture and textiles, and imagery connected to the women whose stories I follow. These retro, worn patterns evoke domestic materiality, a soft counterweight to the sharp instruments of state control. They often envelop or intrude on figures, hinting at a life that continues at home, one that never made it into the official record.
Many of my paintings begin with a single story of a woman’s resistance to state abuse perpetuated through medical, judicial, and labor systems. I follow this thread outward, finding repeating patterns in seemingly disparate stories across time. I’m drawn to the friction between violence and decoration—to how injustice can coexist with something as benign as a nice floral print. I’m curious about how beauty can serve us, about the possibility that the visual joy of bright color and rhythmic pattern might allow the content to slip surreptitiously past, radicalizing the living room.
Molnar (b. 1991, Budapest, Hungary) received her MFA from New York University and her BA in Studio Art from Dartmouth College. Recent exhibitions include The Beauty of Politics: Oscar Bluemner and Luca Molnar at the Hand Art Center (DeLand, FL); Helybe at alt_space Gallery (New Smyrna Beach, FL); and Same Source at Art Center Sarasota (FL). She is an Associate Professor of Studio Art at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida.
Photograph by Barnabás Neogrády-Kiss