The elusive treasures of existence

The experience of leaving one's homeland is often a mix of joy and sorrow. We strive for new opportunities while carrying the weight of longing for the familiar. As a person of Hungarian descent who emigrated to a Western country, my work is inspired by how to ground oneself again and maintain identity in a foreign country. The project articulates profound emotions and narratives from this ambivalent journey of a decade.

As an immigrant, there is a constant dialogue between presence and absence in my life. I try to navigate between the terrain of memory, displacement, and belonging while looking for symbolism and traditional motifs of personal history to define a hybrid identity. Based on this new emotional aspect, I started documenting my family in Hungary while reinterpreting objects in the former home. I realized that these objects are not just tangible extensions of my Eastern European identity but also grotesque imprints of present reality. (Dávid Matécsa)

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Dávid Matécsa was born in 1992 in Hungary and currently lives in the United Kingdom. First studying applied photography, he went on to gain admission to the University of the Arts in London, where he attended the Fine Art Photography programme. His pictures are centred around the search for identity, his subjects are places and objects from his own personal past and present, as well as discoveries of these. In 2023, his creative work found recognition in his being the only Hungarian to reach the finals of the Paris Photo Carte Blanche Student Award. In his series, The Elusive Treasures of Existence, he focuses on exploring the inner world and understanding the invisible values of life. His photographs encourage the viewer to notice more meaningful moments behind the surface and to be more appreciative of those that really matter.

Dávid Matécsa’s series invites us on a journey that focuses our attention on life’s most important treasures, those moments that often remain hidden but are essential for personal development and self-knowledge. His works employ natural light and simple compositions to highlight the calm of moments and the hidden beauty of everyday life. Over and above the aesthetic experience, the pictures in the series also offer symbolic meaning in their exploration of the meaning of life and the depths of self-knowledge. Matécsa’s art raises questions and invites the viewer to an inner dialogue. Meditative and lyrical in their effect, his photos help the visitor to discover their own life, and encourage them to see its hidden values.

The 15 photos on view in the PaperLab Gallery look at the complex questions of identity and belonging from the perspective of a person who tries to put down roots in a new environment, while feeling deeply attached to their homeland. The works reflect the inner dialogue between presence and absence, the memories of the past and the new reality. The images and objects in the series are not only tangible manifestations of Eastern European identity, but the impressions as well of personal and collective memory. Matécsa reveals the inner journey of the search for a hybrid identity, in which the questions of memory and belonging are central.

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