Steps away from Chain Bridge, a metal-made sculpture depicting a young woman walking has been turning heads on Pest’s prominent riverfront Széchenyi Square. Installed at a significant tourist-crossing spot where scenic Buda meets lively Pest, the “Girl from Buda” is a newly built temporary public artwork, a contemporary figure amid Habsburg-era landmarks, a symbol of past and future.
"For me, the ultimate goal for a public sculpture is to become part of the city," says "Girl from Buda" creator Eran Shakhine. The Israeli artist created a permanent work, "You and Me", in the center of Warsaw three years ago. Now it is a popular meeting place. Though the golden figure of Budapest will be taken down after November, its meanings should resonate for longer.
“For the last couple of years, I’ve been working on a group of statues called ‘Giacometti’s granddaughter as a supermodel’," explains Shakhine. "I combine the figure from Giacometti’s sculptures and give them contemporary social context."
"Throughout history," he continues, "artists have tried to represent the female form as a canon of beauty and in the more recent past, large figurative sculptures have been used as part of political strategy."
Born in Israel in 1962, Shakine has a deep affinity with Budapest. He is partly of Hungarian origin: “My mother was born in Hungary, she left at the age of 8 and never came back. Now, I hope she will come and visit".
Many works by Shakine, who has also exhibited in London, Miami and Tel Aviv, are site-specific. "Girl from Buda" is no different. "The modern cities of today have become mega cities," he says. "One the one hand they have become an attraction for tourists and on the other, they have to support their local community. In Budapest, you can see these two parts very clearly, Buda and Pest. "The Girl from Buda" is dedicated to young people who live in a contemporary city while keeping their human values, in a fast-changing world of technology."
One of Shakine’s recent successes includes a solo exhibition in Germany’s capital where a collection of his large-scale drawings attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Jewish Museum Berlin. Called “a Muslim, a Christian and a Jew”, the same display will be on show at the Jewish Museum and the Catholic Academy in Munich in February 2018.
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