In the works of Emese Benczúr, the creating process is based on repetition. Usually, her technique is the embroidery, which is conceived as a traditional female occupation. Although embroidery is a way of avoiding boredom, in her case it is the way of artistic creation. The repetition remains a 'special type of punishment of pupils by teacher in the school: the task of writing a word hundred times. Although it is a constraint, the repetition brings with itself the knowledge.'
This activity may seem useless, but it achieves in fact double results. On the one hand, the artwork itself documents the process of creation; on the other hand, that invisible mental change which occurs during the contemplation transforms the relationship between the artist/beholder, and a given thought.
The artist embroiders sentences on the canvas. The chosen sentences deal with the relationship among leisure time, useful occupation and work It Must Be Great To Have So Much Free Time (1994). The canvas was created day by day for three weeks. Its aim is to hint to the wish of experiencing working as having leisure time. In her art, Benczúr is interested in the ways her milieu and the society at large think about her activity. Since artists do not work according to a timetable, outsiders can think that their days consist only of leisure time. In her diploma work, Emese Benczúr embroided the sentence I Am Doing My Duty (1995) on a curtain strap. The repeated sentence reflects ironically her relation to her own artistic production that was created under pressure (of the diploma deadline), and becomes concomitantly the creating process itself.
Her recent works deal with the contradiction between life and intelligent activity (Today I Didn't Go To The Beach either, 1994; 'The Fruit Of My Work, 1996; While Travelling I Do Not Think About Work. While I Think I keep Thinking About Working, 1997).
Instead of embroiding on textile, Emese $Benczúr writes on a wall in the project room, dozens and dozens of times, the sentence It Is Good If You Do Not Recognise That You Work. She writes the text with a pencil and the text is repeated several hundred times on the 20 meter long wall, from the floor up to the ceiling. In this art piece, Emese Benczúr confronts herself and her own public with the value and the effort of her work. Visitors have to advance close to the wall in order to read the pale writing and to meditate on it.
Emese Benczúr had many one-man shows in Hungary (Stúdió Galéria, Bartók 32 Galéria, Budapest; Institute of Contemporary Art, Dunaújváros;). In 1998, she exhibited a new art piece in Moderna Museet Projekt (Stockholm). In 1998, she participated in the Manifesta in Luxembourg, too. In 1999, she was one of the exhibiting artists of the Hungarian Pavilion at the Biennale di Venezia.