How did foxes end up in Budapest?

As a part of the preparation for Advent we thought we would start a special miniseries giving the right to design our header to different graphic designers each week. They, in turn, will show us how they see Budapest in winter through their glasses.

Our first guest is the young fashion designer and painter Anna Zsófia Kormos, who conquers the city again and again with her fox graffiti. The FOUR brand she founded with three of her designer friends has won several awards in the past two years such as the special prize of Gombold Újra (re-button it), a designer competition. Her paintings were recently put on display at Fogasház thanks to Portfolio Points.

WLB: Talk about your design for We Love Budapest.
Anna Zsófia Kormos:

That I love Budapest is a fact. Whether it’s spring, fall, summer or winter, there’s always something special in this city. I lived in Buda for years during which time I had to take the tram to Pest every morning and I found the fog between the bridges always very enchanting, a spectacle that has been a definitive experience of the Budapest winter.

The hues of blue and pink remind me of these colored but faint lights, the atmosphere of the awakening winter city, and the fox is my emblematic animal, my “tag”, if you like.
Foxes stir in the city only in the dark, and even then very carefully, almost invisibly they walk the streets. They are present but hiding and this is something graffiti artists can say about themselves, too. I started drawing foxes 4 or 5 years ago when I studied painting in Óbuda. They invaded all of my notebooks, and later on I met more and more people who I could go spraying with. For a long time I have been unable to separate textile design and painting but since I am reluctant to downgrade either to only a hobby, I don’t even want to make a decision.

WLB:

Do you have a personal set of rules as to where you can and where you shouldn’t spray?

Anna Zsófia Kormos:

There’s a little piquancy involved actually, since my mom’s worked for and with the National Office of Cultural Heritage, but I would never paint on a nice century-old building anyway. This is not vandalism, our goal is rather to create something lasting in, for example, abandoned factories, suburbs or along railways. But I’ve got a painting that has probably never been seen by anybody else but me. Then there’s a fox on one of the stairways of Deák Square and another in Király Street on a run-down building held together by scaffolding for years, where I went back five times to spray. These are pretty well-known.

WLB:

Where and how do you spend you Christmas this year?

Anna Zsófia Kormos:

As my parents are divorced me and my sister always have to rush from one place to the other, mostly here in the city. Now that my sister, Bori, arrived home from Indonesia, where she studied thanks to a scholarship program, we’re going to have a Christmas tree at our apartment too. What’s certain is that there won’t be the usual decorations on it but plenty of beautiful ornaments from Indonesia Bori brought, for example. Of course, she didn’t buy them with this in mind. Christmas is very important to me but I’m not the type who panics and gets all agitated about everything. Many times I make the presents myself because I think personal ones are better than those off the conveyor belt – I sew clothes or give my friends an issue of my fanzine.

WLB:

What do you wish for yourself for 2012?
Anna Zsófia Kormos:

There’s a personal part of new year wishes which are not supposed to be told anyone, as far as I know. This year has been very intense, filled mostly with work into the small hours and college stuffs.

The upcoming year is going to be very exciting, too, since I’m traveling to Paris, where I want to try out as many new things as I can, work with as many different people as I can, design things to improve. I want adventure. This may be the best word.