Date

⚠️ Content Warning: The following text contains distressing themes and is not suitable for children. Please consider your emotional well-being before reading.

I am reading news from Hungary. A few years ago, a female university student was raped in her own dorm room. Every Hungarian authority abandoned her, retraumatizing her in the process. Until she turned to a human rights advocate, the hospital refused to take a medical report, and the police refused to file her complaint, mocking her instead: “Off you go to the afterparty!” Yet the perpetrator admitted his act in writing, and there was other clear physical evidence as well. The leadership of the University of Fine Arts allowed the perpetrator to stay in the dormitory until he graduated. It was the victim who had to leave. The perpetrator even took part in an Erasmus Programme, while the Hungarian university failed to inform the foreign partner institution that there was an ongoing procedure against the male student. The university’s chancellor called the case a “conflict.” According to him, “if students quarrel, that’s their business.” In recent days, the Hungarian justice system acquitted the rapist. The court justified its decision by stating that “lack of consent is not yet violence.” And the university believes that “it would have been a shame to ruin a talented young man’s future over one misstep.” Why isn’t the conversation about the victim’s future and her need for support?! There is currently a petition being circulated with the aim of introducing the concept of consent into Hungarian law. I signed the petition. Hundreds of former and current students of the University of Fine Arts are protesting in outrage. In front of the building, the following message was displayed: “Silence is not consent. Stillness is not consent. Refusing to use a condom is also rape!”

The coincidence is astonishing. I had started the sketches for my painting days before social media, and later the press, reported on yet another shocking case of misogyny, one fueled also by the Hungarian government. What motivated me? The fact that Instagram blocked the promotion of my previous painting (Mansplaining – just the first step), which I created precisely for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (25 November), as a gesture of solidarity with victims and survivors. And of course, I was also motivated by my own story and my healing.

My painting depicts an enclosed space. Inside it, pressure, coldness, mechanical monotony, and a sharp sense of the unspoken all strengthen the feeling of hopelessness and irreversibility. Are there truly no windows and no door, or are they simply unreachable, invisible? Either way, they cannot fulfill their function if one’s intention is free action and deciding whether to leave a place or not. From where is it easier to leave? A box or an apartment? In this space, there are no objects. Nothing to rearrange or to refer to by another name. It is not clear whether the side walls are made of transparent glass or wooden planks. Whoever ends up in this space cannot see out, and cannot see any way out. Nor do they see other people around them with whom they might find the exit together. What is more, the individual who enters the space is not visible. It is not visible what stands behind them. The only possible action is to look at the bright wall opposite, covered with countless red signs. As if a story were painted and written on the wall at the same time. And yet the letters are unreadable. What is their meaning? What do they say? For the one who looks from the inside, perhaps the marks give some comfort and the sense that they are not entirely alone. For the one who looks from the outside, having pushed someone into this space, they should represent a confrontation with their own actions!

I was 17 years old, practicing a piece one afternoon in one of the piano rooms. I loved playing the piano. Suddenly the door opened and one of my music teachers walked in. He started talking about how I was playing the triplet rhythm incorrectly in one of the voice parts. I didn’t understand what he meant. My piano teacher said my rhythms were flawless. He showed me. Meanwhile, he suddenly kissed me, and I froze on the piano stool. He reached under my long, oversized brown turtleneck sweater and started groping my breasts. This was the first sexual abuse committed by one of my teachers in my life. And it was also the first kiss of my life. It wasn’t how I imagined it. He sighed contentedly and said it felt good to him. By the time I came to my senses, he was already outside the room. I felt voiceless, dirty, and lost. I was broken. When I told my mother, she just shrugged and responded by asking why I went there and why I let it happen. She slut-shamed me. She had no intention of helping or standing up for me. She didn’t care what happened to me. Classic victim-blaming behavior. The next day she advised me to shut my mouth if I really wanted to go to the music academy. She told me that I didn’t need to study music, because it was an expensive thing. If back then I had been stubborn, then now I should bear the consequences of it and attend the free lessons the teacher had previously offered. (We had no money for a private teacher, nor for a piano at home. Interestingly, my mother somehow always had enough for a few packs of cigarettes a day.)

Another memory I have of the same teacher is that he stopped his car, and I heard the car door lock click. Even though I asked him, he didn’t unlock it. I couldn’t escape from the car, and from the shock I didn’t even know where we were. It was winter and dark. He drove to the edge of the city. He didn’t want anyone to see him molesting his 17-year-old student. He started groping me and undressing me. No matter how much I begged him to stop, that I didn’t want it, he kept repeating that he knew I wanted it too. “Just a little.” I couldn’t push his hand away, it was everywhere. After a while I gave up, I let it happen, just waited for him to finish. I dissociated from my body. To this day I remember the brand of his car and its license plate.

After all this my mother prevented me from going to the music academy in another city (if I dared to submit the application, I could go live on the street), I ended up studying pedagogy, which didn’t interest me at all. One summer evening I had a crying fit from my mother’s and grandmother’s abusive insults. I ran out of the house crying; I had nowhere to go and didn’t know where I would sleep. I literally ran into one of my college teachers. Through sobs I asked him if he or someone he knew had a free apartment or even a half-room for that night where I could be safe and sleep. I told him what was happening at home and that I had no one to turn to for help. I was naïve and traumatized in every area of my life. He said he was currently a “temporarily single,” and that he would sleep in his wife’s room, so I could be in the living room. I believed him. I trusted him, as he was a well-known figure in the small town. He pinned me down. I couldn’t move under him. No matter how I struggled, both verbally and physically. He restrained me and pressed his hundred kilos onto me. He was 27 years older than me. After a while, he noticed I had gone silent and stopped moving. He didn’t care. He didn’t stop. He raped me. Sometimes I caught sight of his disgusting, pleasure-drunk face, and I knew I had to survive. There was no one who could help me back then, but one day I would leave the town behind, all of Hungary behind. I just had to survive. One day at a time. I felt as if I were not only dissociating from my body, but as if I were also separated from that pure and hopeful person I had once been. That night it went on for hours. All the while one of his favorite pieces was playing on loop. Turned up loud. Ravel’s Bolero.