Art is an important part of many of our lives, as it can be so varied and diverse: it can inspire, provoke thought, entertain, but in any case, it has an effect on our emotions. And in doing so, it takes us out of our everyday lives. Art is also linked to activism, as it gives voice to experiences, identities, and feelings that are marginalized in society.
In this article, we want to show that you don’t have to be an artist to create for your community. Our guest is Edina Hoffmann, an ARC poster exhibitor, who is known to our wider community for the Crush On You parties she has been organizing over the past few years.
Hello Edina! Please introduce yourself to our readers.
Hello everyone! I’m Edina Hoffman. Introducing myself is always a challenge for me because it is difficult to say in just a few words what interests me, but I’ll try.
In the past few years I have been consciously striving to live a healthier lifestyle, both physically and mentally. I think today this is getting more and more difficult, which is why it’s so important.
I really like painting, Italian culture, and music, especially jazz and classical. I have an analytical mindset, which comes in handy for my line of work. The field I work in is difficult to categorize, it’s somewhere between marketing and IT, and it depends on the company whether it is in the marketing or IT department. I mainly deal with analyzing and improving website performance.
I really like my work, but also consider it important to find inspiration in other areas of my life and to have goals or moments that give me joy. For me, the ARC exhibition is a small part of that.
When and why did you begin to make posters for the ARC exhibition?
I’ve always liked Péter Geszti’s work. I consider him a talented person who is capable of making lasting works in both marketing and music.
When they announced the ARC exhibition, I found it exciting. So, I went out to see it (maybe it was the 4th exhibition, but for me it was the 1st).
I really liked the posters and, after that, every year I went to see the exhibition, and once it occurred to me that I could also come up with similar poster ideas myself.
I applied for the next exhibition, and my poster was accepted to be among the works. The main theme then, in 2014, was “What do you believe in?”. I just wrote on a simple black background: “Women = Men”. That was my first poster at ARC, and in the following years my works have been exhibited several times.
Congratulations! Many think that art is about drawing skills, even though there are more and more software-assisted methods of creating art. What do you think?
First, I’ll answer related to the ARC exhibition. The biggest headache for me with creating ARC posters is that I am not an artist, and I don’t have the graphic design skills needed to make truly great posters. That’s why I always needed software assistance to create my posters.
At the ARC exhibition, I consider the message to be more important than the visuals, because we are reaching out to huge crowds, and the message of the poster, the shared thinking, and the sense of togetherness must be much more emphasized. ARC has always been at the forefront of accepting not only perfectly executed works, but messages that speak to society. Of course, I’m not saying the quality isn’t important.
In general, I think that art can be very diverse, and perhaps one of its most important characteristics is that it cannot be framed or limited. Art is everywhere, you just have to notice it.
What a great ending!
