Áron Lődi

Áron Lődi's (b. 1996) practice spans installation, image-making, writing, publishing, and curatorial collaborations. His work engages with the contradictions of contemporary society, oscillating between horror stories and emancipatory possibilities. While dealing with contemporary ideologies and the heritage of the Eastern Bloc, he often references concepts of gothic Marxism, new materialism, and utopian politics. He materializes this conceptual framework through an aesthetic inquiry into cultural and material memory. He combines sculpted or "fabricated", and found elements, creating interconnected visual narratives. Through his works, he aims to construct and deconstruct stories about individual and collective agency in the face of contemporary crises.

Áron Lődi graduated with an MFA from the Dirty Art Department at Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam (2023). He is a founding member of the Budapest-based U&K Magazine publishing project and part of the artist duo ALAGYA (w/ Szilvia Bolla). In 2022, he initiated a para-academic program and lecture series titled Contaminating The Soil That Nurtures Greed focusing on "Second World" artistic strategies. In 2024, he co-organised the MetaforumX: Permacrises conference at Trafo Gallery, Budapest in collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures, Amsterdam. His works were presented at Jedna Dva Tri Gallery, Prague (CZ), A Promise of Kneropy, Bratislava (SK), Vunu Gallery, Kosice (SK), Semester9, Amsterdam (NL), Modem Centre for Modern and Contemporary Arts, Debrecen (HU), Studio Hanniball, Berlin (DE), and 1111 Gallery, Budapest (HU). In 2023, he was a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart (DE). In 2024, he received the Klára-Herczeg Prize together with Szilvia Bolla from the Studio of the Young Artists' Association, Budapest (HU).

Residency dates: 15. 8. – 31.10.2025

This residency project is a collaboration between Goethe-Institut Tschechien and MeetFactory 

RESIDENCY PROJECT 

Lodi's project Haunted Datasets and Post-Sovereign Bodies (working title) focuses on the recent constitutional amendment in Hungary that bans public gatherings by LGBTQ+ communities and enables the use of emerging surveillance technologies to identify attendees and enforce the new law. This crackdown on human rights is not merely another effort to subjugate queer people, but can also be understood as part of a series of long-ongoing tactics and policy changes that secure the technocratic power of the state. It dialogues with the rise of platform fascism and transnational algorithmic authoritarianism. Within the framework of the residency, Lödi's goal is to map out the Hungarian state's surveillance and safety policies whose introductions were often disguised as measures against immigration, the political influence of the EU, George Soros, or other "foreign agents". Imperial boomerang in full swing. It is through this lens, that Lödi will observe and deconstruct Hungary's political opacity and shifting position on the West-East spectrum and explore what happens to the surveilled individual and their data under such regimes.

The project asks what if data carried ghosts and what happens when such data is fed to the machine. In other words, it seeks to highlight the vulnerability of historically corrupt authoritarian regimes while creating a narrative in which the body can resist policing and surveillance. This project builds on speculative narratives and fieldwork, archival media, real-life anti-AI and -surveillance strategies, and the new materialist deconstruction of memory and power through sculptural assemblages.

EDUCATION

2023    MFA from the Dirty Art Department at Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, NL

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

2025    ‘Born in Transition’ at Studio Hanniball, Berlin, DE

2025    ‘Exoskeleton’ at Torula, Győr, HU

2024    ‘Metallurgia’ at 1111 Gallery, Budapest, HU

2024    ‘Post-Fascism’ at Semester9 at Loods6, Amsterdam, NL

2023    ‘The Spit of Hurelonasmi was Many Things’ at Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam, NL

2023    ‘This is a World where Nothing is Solved’ at Promise of Kneropy, Bratislava, SK

2022    ‘But all the Foam Turned into Glue’ at Jedna Dva Tri Gallery, Prague, CZ

2022     ‘Tool Activity’ at Vunu Gallery, Kosice, SK

All information is accurate as of 15 August, 2025