Boglárka Balassa (*1991, lives and works in Karlsruhe) studied Fine Arts and Painting at the University of Pécs (Hu), at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts in Kiel and at the State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe. Her work has been shown in several exhibitions and won awards such as The Albert Haueisen Stiftung Support Prize and The Paul Heinrich Ebell Kunstpreis Audience Prize. She participated in a mentoring programme organised by Kunstbüro BW, where her mentor was Susanne Kriemann and Neustart Kulturbüro supported her group project titled Natural Entites

Her multimedia artistic work is often characterised by material investigations and the depiction of temporal processes, which focus on material change. Her art asks questions on materiality
and reflects on the aesthetic quality of impermanence and ambiguity. This reflection begins with the exploration of the physical material, which is not just the body of the end product, but also an object of the reflection, and sometimes even the reflection itself.
During her residency, she worked on the project titled ‘Cycles (Autumn, Winter, Spring and Summer)’, which addresses issues of environment, climate change and cultural heritage by using a temporal variation of natural materials and processing them in a traditional way. She learned the old traditional yarn dyeing in an artist residency program in the artists' colony of Lazarea, Romania. In this region, Transylvania, this is still a living tradition: in some villages, people still produce such materials themselves as part of everyday life. They live in a close relationship with nature.
‘I think that the provenance of our objects is becoming increasingly important today. Industrial production pollutes the natural environment and contributes greatly to climate change. I would like to call people’s attention to the damage we are doing, but also to the positive alternatives we can find in our history.’

Balassa’s residency was supported by Culture Moves Europe. Her project was produced with the financial assistance of the European Union. The views expressed herein can in no way be taken to reflect the official opinion of the European Union.