mendi

2013

“Life is a longer or shorter period of suffering, sometimes filled with joys and terminating with a certain death. My life: Well, it could have formed differently, but I know that this card was assigned to me, and I drew bad cards. There is a commonly used sentence that if there was a book about my life, readers couldn’t decide whether it would end up as a tragedy or a comedy.

Who am I? Currently, I am only an invalid. Sick. Woman. A woman, who lives together with her mother and an Autistic boy, the son of her younger sister, but I raise him. Who I used to be is much more interesting. I worked in the porn business. I worked in the erotic business. I worked in the night. I worked in the media. Still, I was forgotten within a week.

I am not proud of my past. If I could turn back time, I would never ever become a porn actress. I would be much more perseverant and become an archaeologist.”

Mendi is a former porn actress who lives together with her mother and her sister’s son, Richard, an Autistic boy. Mendi cares about them both. Mendi struggles with obesity and diabetes; she has lived on a disability pension since she left the porn industry. She doesn’t like going outside and mostly plays on the computer or cards with the family. Her mother, Elizabeth, is a pensioner who is always at home too. She likes watching talk shows on TV. They quarrel a lot with Mendi, mostly because of the lack of money. Richard is not Mendi’s son; he was left to her care by Mendi’s sister, who, after finding out that her son was Autistic, left him behind. Mendi loves Richard as her own son. The series try to capture Mendi’s everyday struggles to care about her mother, her nephew, and to bear the unbearable thing that is life.

My book MENDI: The Sensual Heart Attack (2013) is >> available to purchase <<

main exhibitions:

2018: Women in 3 Acts (Paz Errázuriz, Gluklya, Anastasia Khoroshilova, Ditte Lyngkaer Pedersen, Maya Schweizer, Lilla Szász), Gallery INDA, Budapest (curator: Kati Simon)
2018: Women in 3 Acts (Paz Errázuriz, Gluklya, Ditte Lyngkaer Pedersen, Maya Schweizer, Katarina Šoškić, Lilla Szász), Galerie Fotohof, Salzburg (curator: Kati Simon)
2016: Dazzle – Gallery INDA, Budapest (curator: Monika Perenyei)
2013: In Kitchen. In bed. In public – Hungarian House of Photography (curator: Kata Oltai)