Carnivores – Eszter Metzing

Carnivores
– 2025

Carnivores / Húsevők

Trio exhibition with Andrea Szilák and Zsófia Antalka

Curated by the artists
Coordinated by Miroslava Urbanova, gallery director

It was on display between September 9 and October 12, at Medium Gallery in Bratislava, Slovakia, 2025.

The skeletal system represents the body's physical strength and vulnerability. By its very nature, it is either a line of defence or a weapon for any aggressor: hard hands and sharp teeth delve into the soft flesh of the victim, exploring flavours and textures. The feeding and digestion process metaphorically presupposes the interiorisation and acceptance of foreign bodies in order to sustain life. The domestication of animals is the cornerstone of civilisation, requiring gentle treatment and care, as well as the ability to extinguish life. The visceral and philosophical state of being a predator is sometimes permeated by the moral dilemma of aggression, the tragedy of taking life, linking the instinctive act — essential for species preservation — with nature's fallibility and grief over extinction.
Our modern socio-economic structures are no longer based on a system of property.
Represented by land and livestock, yet much has been learned from the hunting scenes depicted in cave paintings. These scenes have been transformed into well-crafted, manipulative forms of behaviour, incorporating the stealthy rhetorical devices of the corporate world or even the psychic warfare of interpersonal relations — a struggle for dominance based on passive-aggressive displays. Throughout our project, we will explore the archetype of the hunter, the connotations of being a carnivore and the themes of inclusion and intolerance.
Andrea Szilák

In my works I explore the multiple functions and narrative interpretations of fabric covering the body.
The phenomenological function of skin is to anchor. When something touches our skin, we are instantly brought back to the present. The skin is the body's memory of our lives: touch goes beyond mere physical contact, forming a link between the present and the past. The skin is both a boundary and a point of connection — the place where we touch and are touched by others. It is simultaneously the most private experience and the most public marker of racial, gender and national history. No body is distinctly separate from its environment, and no space is independent of the unconscious image of the perceiving self. I uses borosilicate glass, natural latex and raw cotton linen, which makes processing and sensitive qualities apparent, in a dialogical way. Through the organic evolution of forms, I reflect on the instinctive processes of growth and self-defence: the vulnerable surface covering our bodies acts as both a shell and a visible surface of our past, of which evokes through remembrance.