GYPSY CRIMINALS FOR PRESIDENT
@ BUDAPEST CONTEMPORARY
Through political and social satire, the collective examines contemporary Hungarian reality using provocative and often deliberately anti-PC strategies. One of the central themes of their artistic practice is the hypocrisy of elites: the contradictions, double standards and mechanisms of self-justification within political, economic, cultural and artistic power structures. Their criticism is not aligned with a single political side: far-right and far-left rhetoric, populism, identity politics and different manifestations of power can all become subjects of their satire. Their Roma Dadaist method is based on appropriation, over-identification, absurdity, provocation and self-irony.
The paintings draw on the visual languages of naïve painting, political posters and propaganda imagery. A recurring motif is the mask, referring simultaneously to racist stereotypes, the performativity of identity, the theatricality of political role-playing and the hypocrisy of elites. The collective appropriates the language of political communication and turns it back on itself through exaggeration and by pushing its internal contradictions to the point of absurdity.
Gypsy Criminals is a Roma Dadaist art collective founded in 2024. Its founding members are Mc Lakatos Hunor (aka Oláh Norbert), Gróf Nagybányai Horthy Rolex Leonidasz (aka Szegedi Tamás), and Hádész Junior, a twenty-five-centimetre-tall Miniature Pinscher. The group’s name deliberately appropriates one of the most heavily charged expressions in Hungarian public discourse. The term cigánybűnözés (“Gypsy crime”) was present in criminological and law-enforcement discourse during the Kádár era and today carries discriminatory and racist connotations, while also appearing as part of far-right political rhetoric.
Gypsy Criminals for President can be understood as a particular social and political imprint of the NER era in the period leading up to the elections. Created immediately before the vote, the works respond to a public sphere in which propaganda, culture wars and political absurdity often seemed to surpass the possibilities of satire itself. The series therefore functions not as a retrospective commentary, but as a direct visual response to an intensely charged historical moment.
The events of the most recent election have already become part of the history of the present. Only a few months ago, Gypsy Criminals for President emerged as an ironic response to an intensely charged political moment and to the absurdity and drama of the campaign. Today, the series can also be read as a grotesque visual record of a recent political era and as part of a process through which we begin to reflect on, interpret and place into historical perspective the social and political experiences of the past two decades. While the series captures a political moment that has come to an end, the critical position of Gypsy Criminals does not end with it: the collective aims to remain critically engaged with the power structures, social contradictions and hypocrisies of the present.
My Role & Collaboration
Following the collective’s founding in 2024, I had the privilege of joining Gypsy Criminals as an active member. I contributed directly to shaping the conceptual framework and developing the visual aesthetics of the project. A significant milestone in my artistic journey was seeing the work exhibited at Budapest Contemporary, one of Hungary’s most prominent contemporary art fairs and exhibitions. Being part of this collaborative process was an inspiring and defining creative experience.