Exhibiting artists: Gyöngyvér Gerhát, Klaudia Januško, Anna Járai, Regina Sárvári, Syster Hysteria, Luca Szalmay, Vim Art

Curator: Petra Magda

Pop-up exhibition open: February 10-11, 2026

Performance: February 11, 2026, 6 p.m.

Venue: Auróra Pince

In 2022, a female student was raped by a fellow student at the dormitory of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts. The woman repeatedly asked him to stop, but the man did not stop. The next day, he admitted via text message that he had raped her. The student turned to the hospital and the police for help, but was sent away by both. Later, the prosecutor’s office brought charges not for sexual assault but for sexual coercion, and the case ultimately ended in acquittal.

The university’s students launched demonstrations: bloody sheets, silent protests, and guerrilla actions appeared in front of the university. Nevertheless, the protests subsided over time, and no legislative or institutional changes were made. After a few weeks of outrage, the case slowly faded into oblivion.

How can such a serious case become so invisible in Hungary?

Why is it that while there were forty large-scale feminist protests in Poland between 2016 and 2021, there were only ten in Hungary between 2010 and 2021? According to Anna Gwiazda’s research, feminist issues have less social significance in Hungary, and the government’s occasional partial concessions further reduce mobilization.

However, the issue of gender-based violence tells us more than that. Behind the indifference, systemic failures, and institutional inaction lies a bigger question: why do we no longer believe that protest can bring about change? According to Micah White, modern protests are often spectacular but ineffective: those in power no longer feel them as real pressure, and movements struggle to find new forms of resistance.

This exhibition is about hope. It is about the fact that change does not happen by itself. And it is about the fact that forgetting is also a decision—just like standing up.

*At the end of January 2026, the Budapest Chief Prosecutor’s Office submitted a motion for review to have the case reopened.