Image: Center for Modern and Contemporary Art Debrecen
Kádár Emese’s solo exhibition ‘The Unrisen Sun // Jégbe zárt nap’ is on view at MODEM Project Space in Debrecen, Hungary, through September 6. The exhibition examines grief, digital remembrance and the question of how loss can be preserved, bringing together textile-based works and symbols associated with contemporary forms of memory.
Kádár, a visual artist born in Debrecen, approaches mourning through the language of contemporary art. According to the exhibition text, her earlier work focused on digital memories and present-day rituals of grief. The new series ‘Ghost Traces’, presented in the exhibition, takes a more lyrical and personal approach to the experience of processing loss.
The exhibition began with the artist’s experience of visiting a cemetery in summer. The intense heat of July and the glare of sunlight stood in sharp contrast to what the exhibition describes as the frozen state of grief. From this opposition, Kádár develops an image of an eternal sunrise: a world that is simultaneously cold and warm, and that holds the tension between preserving memories and wanting to release them.
At MODEM Project Space, the works evoke a symbolic landscape locked in ice, where the sun and frost appear as competing forces. Sunlight does not necessarily offer clarity or a path forward. Instead, its intensity can blind, leaving behind what the exhibition describes as a ghost-like afterimage. The resulting atmosphere connects emotional stasis with a broader meditation on how memories remain present even as they change.
Kádár works with woven textiles and also experiments with needle felting. Within these material forms, signs of digital remembrance—including the bookmark, save symbols and buttons used to play audio files—are combined with frozen natural elements and imagery associated with mourning rituals. The juxtaposition links ordinary digital actions with acts of commemoration, suggesting how everyday interfaces have become part of the way people store, revisit and organize memories.
The exhibition also extends its questions beyond personal experience to digital inheritance and the systems built to preserve information. Its Arctic atmosphere evokes the issue of data centres buried in the permafrost of Svalbard, prompting questions about what is kept at all costs, what is buried and what might eventually need to be brought to the surface and released. These concerns are presented through the exhibition’s visual and material language rather than through documentary explanation.
‘The Unrisen Sun // Jégbe zárt nap’ is curated by Vanda Sárai and remains on view at MODEM Project Space in Debrecen until September 6, 2026. MODEM Modern and Contemporary Art Centre, founded in 2006, lists its exhibitions and programmes at its Debrecen centre, where the exhibition is open Tuesday to Sunday, with extended hours on Wednesdays.
