In her artistic practice, Nelli Szabó (1989.11.21. Szentes, HU) explores the boundaries of design and fine art. She started her career as a visual artist and later continued as a designer specialized in furniture design. Throghout her works of art she constantly conveys the crossover and interdisciplinary possibilities of the two fields by approaches theoretical and personal issues and discourses with humour, irony and a critical attitude.

She examines the relationship between design and fine art mostly in terms of aesthetics, cultural anthropology and philosophy, touching on conceptual categories and phenomena such as liminality, marginality, the particular as an aesthetic concept, critical design, and the taxonomy and possible classification systems of objects.

Her work is not bound to a single medium, but often emerges as an intersection of design, craft and sculpture. She has participated in several exhibitions and residencies at home and abroad in recent years, such as the Art Hub Abu Dhabi artist residency programme in 2019, the Xarkis Art Festival in Cyprus in 2022, and in 2023 she spent one month in Kyoto, hosted by Bridge to Kyoto, where she researched the methods of traditional Japanese wood joinery from an aesthetic and design perspective, focusing on Kyoto’s architecture and object culture.