Fotograf Zone – Szilvia Bolla

Neurogram series, 2024

In her practice, Szilvia Bolla deals with questions around mental health in late-capitalist society, more concretely both the individual and the social, political, biological aspects of depression. Her largest solo exhibition so far, Running Up that Hill (Glassyard Gallery, 2024) “confronts the aesthetic and political dimensions of personal, transgenerational as well as systemic depression within a depressive economical-ideological system”. (excerpt from the curatorial text by Barnabás Zemlényi-Kovács). Thus Bolla’s practice is both rooted in her own personal experiences with mental health as well as in examining her family and its transgenerational aspect.

In the Neurogram series presented here, we can observe her interest in so-called “anti-photographs”. The seemingly abstract photograms refer to the fact that the texture of the skin is similar in its light-sensitivity to that of the photographic paper: they can both capture mental imprints and share similar pattern structures. The title of the series also refers to this duality: on one hand, the term is used in psychological and neurological contexts, referring to the postulated neural imprint or 'memory trace' of an experience. On the other hand, it refers to the medical image-making method of neurography, which visualizes peripheral nerves by capturing their electrical activity or state. The photograms thus become imprints of invisible narratives, states and tensions, carried by the body through generations.

As the artist puts it: “Photography without the burdens of representation felt so relieving as I immersed myself in camera-less techniques. It was a response not only to the collapse of the medium, but a world accelerating towards total uncertainty, immateriality, and the absence of presence. Contrary to escapism or seemingly selfish formalism, photography beyond representation remained enduringly relevant by challenging technical images and vindicating reality. In that sense, the core of my research became the ontology of the photographic image.”

EXHIBITION
FEVER STATE
October 4–12, 2025
Holešovice Market, Hall 13

Szilvia Bolla

is a visual artist based between Budapest and The Hague. Her interdisciplinary practice brings together photography, sculpture, and installation, exploring the fragile interactions between humans and artifacts. She describes her works as 'cryptophotographic’, created through darkroom experiments with photosensitive crystals reacting to chemical substances. Grounded in new materialism and feminist theory, her projects evoke narratives of survival and reflect on the entanglement of human beings with matter and technology.

#49 Talk Together

This issue explores language – its forms, possibilities, and limits. We look at how we communicate in the digital space, how the language of artificial intelligence changes our notions of creativity, and how visual images can replace words. You will discover why language is never neutral and how it shapes identity, creates inequalities, and opens paths to liberation. The issue features a reflection by bell hooks, the artistic practice of Eszter Magyar, projects documenting the Roma community in Brno, and visual essays by Claudia Larcher and Tabor Robak. The magazine presents language as a tool of communication, power, and resistance and invites you to reflect on what it truly means to talk to one another today.