The installation is made of metal and wood elements, its visuality evoking spaces of board games, playgrounds and social structures. The ladders evoke the world of playground climbing frames, the snakes the aesthetics of wooden toys, while the sandpit's design is manifested in the playground and the sand mill that acts as a "target". The sand as a playground is a reflection of Áron Márk Éber's model of social structure, which analyses the class dynamics of Hungarian society after the fall of communism. The location of the sand and the design of the play equipment symbolise the difficulties of mobility and the limitations of individual choices, highlighting the boundaries defined by social structures. The symbolism of ladders and snakes thus not only preserves the legacy of the game, but also reinterprets its moral and social context.

In dialogue with the theories of Mark Fisher and Byung-Chul Han, the exhibition explores the compulsion for self-optimisation and its psychological consequences in neoliberal societies. Along the lines of Fisher's critique of "depression capitalism" and Han's critique of "meritocratic society", narratives built around work, success and failure are transformed into the medium of play. The question of whether mobility is a real possibility or merely a structural determination is not posed as a theoretical discourse, but in a spatial and symbolic way, thus becoming the central organising principle of the exhibition.

Visitors can take the experience of the exhibition with them, using a game of dice and unique dice, so that the questions raised in the game leave the exhibition space and live on in the everyday experience of the viewer. Lilla Molnár Judit Molnár's installation not only approaches the problem of social inequalities and mobility through the medium of board games, but also shows, through her sensitive and detailed approach, how individual life paths are interwoven with invisible structures. The exhibition thus reflects on the autonomy of human choices and their limits, while subtly provoking the viewer to rethink his or her own situation. The viewer is not just an observer, but a participant in the system: he or she can roll the dice, make choices, but still move within a predetermined structure. How real is choice if we do not set the limits?

Judit Lilla Molnár is a visual artist who graduated from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2015 and is currently a doctoral candidate at the university. Her site-specific installations are inspired by personal experiences and life situations that strongly reflect the existential problems affecting her generation and the psychological challenges arising from them. In recent years, she has participated in numerous domestic and international group exhibitions and residency programs.
In 2024, she was invited artist-in-residence at the Salt Lake Cities STOPS AND STATIONS residency programme, as part of the Salzkammergut European Capital of Culture project, and her solo exhibition Under Construction opened in Linz at the afo Architekturforum Oberösterreich gallery. Her works can currently be seen in the collection exhibition "Hanyas vagy?" at MODEM in Debrecen.
Her most recent solo exhibition in Hungary was curated by Ajna Maj, in a two-part collaborative exhibition series Outside-the-box, in which she invited artists to transform her own installation.

Krisztián Gábor Török is a curator and art writer who has been working at the MODEM Center of Modern and Contemporary Arts in Debrecen since March 2022. His latest exhibition, Learning from Nature? – Botany, Debrecen, explores the city's rich botanical heritage and new ways of coexisting with nature. In May, he will be organizing Nóra Juhász's solo exhibition at MODEM and working on independent curatorial projects such as the joint exhibition of Katalin Kortmann Járay and Karina Mendreczky at the SOPA Gallery in Košice. Török has participated in numerous domestic and international projects as a curator, including the Art Encounters Biennial in Timișoara, and is a member of CIMAM and the Hungarian section of AICA.

The exhibition is organized by the Together for Art Association in cooperation with the Esterházy Hungary Foundation.

Graphic design by Zsófia Lipták