Playtime- Within The Four Walls

Patience and trust games, playing in pairs or alone. Playing with time.

 It is difficult to reconcile responsible and adult life with actions that we do only for the sake of doing or for ourselves. Many of us have a familiar inner voice: if something has no real purpose, is it still worth doing?

Tóthová’s series explores the playfulness of adulthood and highlights the importance of the situation that allows us to play and experiment without stakes and break away from everyday activities. Playing is, after all, a mental state, not only because of its goal and tangible benefits but also because of its effect on us.

Games have their internal order; they operate according to a set of rules, the simplicity of which can be a comforting contrast to the often unpredictable events of life.

After moving abroad, Emese Tóthová started experimenting with practices that allowed her to explore the modularity of her living space and, through it, herself. The home is a safe space, a refuge where you can feel free and don’t have to conform to social expectations and cultural norms, or you can even subvert them. Still, spending too much time within four walls can often create a claustrophobic situation, where one feels almost imprisoned in one’s home.

Tóthová responds to this state of mind with playing. Tóthová juxtaposes the challenges of everyday life with the games played in the home’s space, and the images taken with the remote release capture this performative situation.

Emese Tóthová (1997) was born in Slovakia and currently lives and works in Paris, Antwerp and Budapest. She graduated in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in photography from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in Budapest. In 2024 she finished her Photography Master’s degree at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Her first solo show was in 2024 at the Capa Center, in Budapest.