Flóra Gadó – Politics and Poetics of Care

• When: 15 October 2026 at 2 pm
• Where: room H301 – AFAD Library reading room
• Language: English

About the lecture

During her lecture, Flóra Gadó will present her long-term curatorial research, which examines the politics and poetics of care: how the notion of care can be understood on a personal and on a collective level, within the framework of the current care crisis. Introducing more recent exhibitions she co-curated with Judit Szalipszki, such as Holding Space at Kunsthalle Exnergasse (Vienna, 2025), Fever State as part of Fotograf Festival, (Prague, 2025) and Ink in Milk at Trafó Gallery (Budapest, 2025-26) she will trace various curatorial strategies on how to address questions around health, illness, vulnerability and resilience. Thinking about care not only as a “turn” and “trend” in contemporary art and in artistic practices, but as a curatorial methodology will also be a crucial part of the talk: through questions of accessibility and capacity Flóra will bring examples which aim to challenge existing institutional frameworks.

To conclude, she will present her current research focusing on how care extends to the dying and the non-living: examining questions around grief and loss in contemporary society. She will introduce the exhibition My Heart is Crying Inside – Griefworks, which is currently on view at Budapest Gallery and describe how the curatorial concept was formed, what it means to work with such a sensitive topic and what are the various artistic positions – both on a personal and on a collective scale – which are engaging with mourning and loss. By placing the emphasis on a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon of grief, on persistent grief work and on supportive communities and connections, the exhibition challenges the taboo surrounding mourning, the externally imposed expectations and the very act of making grief invisible.

After the lecture, a reading session will be held, where Flóra will present selected texts related to grief, mourning rituals and collective forms of comprehending loss. From academic texts to literary examples, the excerpts will be read and discussed together.

Flóra Gadó

Flóra Gadó is an independent curator, art critic, and researcher based in Brussels. She is currently part of the curatorial team of the upcoming OFF-Biennale Budapest, to be held in 2027. Between 2018 and 2025, she worked as a curator at the municipal contemporary art center Budapest Gallery and curated numerous exhibitions across Central and Eastern Europe, including projects at Kunsthalle Exnergasse (Vienna), tranzit.sk (Bratislava), MeetFactory (Prague), and Trafó House of Contemporary Art (Budapest).

She holds a PhD in Film, Media, and Cultural Studies from Eötvös Loránd University and graduated from the MA Curatorial Practice Programme at the University of Bergen, Norway. Her curatorial residencies and scholarships include Fire Station Artists’ Studios (Dublin), MeetFactory (Prague), KAI (Tallinn), Mondriaan Fonds (Amsterdam), and Frame Finland (Helsinki).

Between 2019 and 2025, she was a lecturer at the Faculty of Art and Design at Budapest Metropolitan University and served as an advisor to the Curatorial Faculty of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. Collaboration is a central aspect of her practice, and she frequently develops curatorial and research projects together with Judit Szalipszki. Recent projects include co-editing the publication tranzit 20+ for the tranzit.org network together with Borbála Soós, published by Archive Books.

installation by Emily Waszak at the exhibition My Heart is Crying Inside - Griefworks at BHM - Budapest Gallery, photo: Tamás G. Juhász