The structure is made of thin iron rods and features twelve motifs: totem animals, creatures with magical powers, mythical figures, welded together at the base. The figure of the Garabonciás (a wandering student with diabolical powers), the Szépasszony (witch), the falcon (the turul), the miraculous deer’s antlers, the ox’s head, the flowers of folk furniture ornamentation, the skull of Kapanyányi Manyó (here a found object, the skull of an unidentified animal), the figure of a white horse reflected in a porcelain object are all recurring figures of Hungarian folk tales and origin stories. These creatures can be found in almost all cultures and mythologies in different forms and with different attributes, but with the same functions. The political ideology that appropriates Hungarian cultural traditions, folk art and folk traditions overshadows these motifs considerably. The installation re-constructs these creatures and objects, by alienating and stripping them of their ‘authentic’ meaning, it can be interpreted as a re-formed origin story. The work is at once a personal pseudo-heritage protection, an ‘appropriation’, and a loosely interpreted identity play based on free association. The interpretation of the title is also multi-layered. According to the English-Hungarian Geological Dictionary, backland means floodplain, flood area, where water from other countries or areas deposits what it carries with it, and then takes it away again and carries it further with a subsequent flood. It is an area that is submerged from time to time, only to become fertile again after the flood. In everyday usage, the term means a hinterland, an area behind a developed region awaiting development.
Katalin Kortmann-Járay