“No one had labored in vain”
stainless steel tube, fitting, giclée print
2024
Things that are needed
stainless steel tube, fitting, giclée print
2024
Infrastructures and systems are recurring characters in Dániel Máté’s work. Reflecting on the histopathology laboratory of the Department of Pathology and Experimental Cancer Research, his two ensembles of works use symbolic means to represent the complex process of cancer diagnostics, an invisible system that requires the work of up to 10-12 people per sample. The works feature diagnostic tools ranging from rubber gloves, slides and digital microscopes through the multitude of tumour tissue samples stored in the building. The support frame of the installations is itself a system: correctly assembled, the steel tubes form a strong skeleton, but one inadequately tightened screw and it all becomes unstable.
One of the images is a photo of Tibor Vilt’s (also symbolic) relief, a monument to radium therapy from the 1930s. This therapy was also the most successful cancer treatment of the time, but today the sculpture on the side of the Institute of Traumatology is as hidden and neglected as the discourse surrounding the disease.
