Drawing on Books V.: Thury Lili – “a little swing from the morning”

 

Drawing on Books serves as the visual experimental platform of the MaDok program: contemporary artists are invited to draw on black-painted surfaces, drawing inspiration from the publications of the Museum of Ethnography.

Opening: April 19, 2025, at 4:00 PM
Location: The space in front of the Etknow bookstore, Museum of Ethnography

Related Publication: Frazon Zsófia (szerk.): Etnomobil – Mozgásban a kortárs kultúra. ( Etnomobil- Contemporary culture in motion )Budapest: Museum of Ethnography, 2010. /MaDok-books 7./

People and their built environment can interact in many different ways. Marc Augé, in his book, Non-Places (1992), describes the modern urban landscape as a state of chaos, where everything blends together. According to his interpretation, people in the modern era wander between the non-places of supermodernity—airports, shopping centres and railway stations—impersonal spaces that reflect a fragmented state of identity. Lili Thury's drawing is based on the experience of everyday travel just like Augé’s book, and the Etnomobile, part of the MaDok booklets, is based on the stories of participants in the 2009 community campaign, who—just like the artist now—shared their experiences of daily travel. In both cases, the theme is simple yet complex: urban transport. At the fifth part of the Drawing on Books series, we follow the steps of Lili Thury, revealing the rhythm of her journey and her experiences with public transport as a young parent. Commuting and the swinging rhythm of life with a small child are intertwined. The map-like traces of the urban everyday culture that surrounds us—the details of the commute from origin to destination—are where it gets really interesting. Objective and subjective components alternate, and in the end, just like the blog posts in Etnomobil, Lili Thury's psychogeographical map becomes part of the museum. The map, which documents precise observations of urban walks, along with moods and emotions influenced by the environment, becomes a communal artifact precisely because it captures elements of urban culture while also engaging the viewer.