Romi Avidan’s LandLocked is very different from her previous works, both in terms of material and subject matter. Avidan is primarily a video maker and a photographer. Her most recent project, made in Israel, is a peculiar documentary, based on real-life memorials, but focusing on the artist’s poetry in the field of the moving image. Her soundless videos are usually text-only, which not only gives the films a visual rhythm, but also has a kind of hypnotic effect on the viewer. In the case of the Budapest work, Avidan has stepped outside the world of video and film, but has retained the emphasis on text as a visual signal, which is thus on an equal footing with the image. In this work, the text has been placed directly on the wall, bypassing the virtual world: the peculiar neon lettering, reminiscent of handwriting, is displayed as a terse yet dynamic horizon against the background. The work was inspired by readings about Hungary: the poetry of these evoked the term “landlocked”, in which she condenses her local impressions. The English word refers to a country surrounded only by land, but it has no exact one-word equivalent in Hungarian or Hebrew. For Avidan, the word describes the special – ‘insulated’– character of Hungary, not only geographically, linguistically, but also historically. An island without a sea.