Réka Ritt Laklia

For us today, the single continent, Pangea, may symbolise a united humanity and, by extension, the unified individual. This painting is a meditation on Pangea, driven by the desire to create a supportive and just global civilisation whose members are recognised as equally valuable, held proportionately responsible, and connected in a supportive way to each other.

The image was inspired by the ideas of Gregory Bateson, one of the leading thinkers of the 20th century. His writings in Mind and Nature (1979) draw attention to “the difference between how nature works and how people think”.

“Such differences have been steering humankind into linear, compartmentalised ways of thinking, thwarting our ability to take a flexible approach to the multiple crises we face. We may sense the urgency, but underestimate our interdependency and find ourselves stuck, because we cannot merely tackle one problem at a time. Hence the use of words like “polycrisis” and “double bind”—originally coined by Gregory Bateson in the context of mental health—to describe our current situation, as we continue to educate our children in obsolete economic and political systems, fearful of losing our creature comforts.
If the double bind is not to make us obsolescent but to help us to evolve, then every organism is urged to take a creative leap of consciousness and embrace the “transcontextual”. In this way, living beings participate in multiple contexts, perceiving combinations and overlap, resonating to movement and change like flora and fauna in a meadow.

Resist the urge to simplify. Do not cling to those material signifiers that polarise societies. To meet the polycrisis, add context to shift the status quo, be responsive to the imperceptible, and stimulate the evolutionary process. Look beyond the spreadsheet to the “warm data”, loosen the compartments, invite the unwelcome guest who disrupts the system, develop new interconnections, and be creative.”
  (Report by Sue Lewis online @ The Scientific and Medical Network, on talk by Nora Bateson 19 July 2023)

The line dissecting the surface of the painting follows the shores of Pangea to reveal the warm reflection of the copper base, which shines like a treasure beneath the paint. The shape is similar to that of an embryo pulsating through the seven panels of the painting like a non-linear period of development, getting ready to be born or reborn spontaneously.

The four elements are brought together; the crusted texture of the paint evokes earth. The engraved line is like a river cutting its way through the land, evoking water. The copper below evokes fire. The blue edges that envelope the images evoke air.

Pieces of a broken clock are scattered throughout the landscape; there is only the present moment. It seems to be the right time to recreate the utopian paradigm of Pangea, where conflicts are resolved inclusively and compassionately and by being brought into context. This may be the right time to realise Spaceship Earth is a limited resource, but if we start caring for every living being, at the present moment, we have enough. It is also the right time to realise that though the Universe might be an unlimited resource, there will never be enough for greed to multiply, control and extract. Greed is the symptom of an entity stuck in a vicious circle, chasing the illusion of independence, often phrasing it as ‘freedom’, unable to step into the “meadow” of interdependence. To find our way to this meadow we all need to follow the path of trust and a sense of being anchored in safety.

'YOU ARE SAFE - A NON-LINEAR PERSPECTIVE' was commissioned by Open Society Foundations. 

Réka Ritt Laklia is a Hungarian visual artist based in London. She received a doctorate in Law and Political Sciences in Budapest and studied children's and criminal psychology before becoming an artist. She holds a BA in Fine Art from Chelsea College, UAL, and her works have been exhibited in the UK and internationally since 2013. She received corporate commissions from Hitachi Consulting, Discovery Networks and Open Society Foundations, and her work was selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2022. In 2023 Réka was awarded 1st Prize in Painting by the Art Gemini Prize in London.

Réka's practice encompasses painting, VR, installation, print and photography. She uses motifs, materials, objects and spaces, often imbued with folkloric elements, that emerge from her Hungarian cultural heritage. She alchemises her ancestral legacy of various crafts, including copper smithing and the intricate cellular patterns of folkloric embroideries, with the global cultural experience she gathered through travelling and living in many different countries. Her organic patterns are inspired by, but do not imitate, Hungarian folkloric motives. Instead, her art is the product of a compassionate and sensitive combination of critical thinking and respect for traditions.

For Réka, the creative process is to understand the narrative of her recollections, identifying the underlying patterns and tendencies that pervade and the parallel patterns and tendencies that run across society and culture. It is a ceremonial quest to find remedies for fractures on all levels of human experience and, in a symbolic manner, to perform curative corrections and adjustments, treating the artwork as her teacher, child and ally.

Through her paintings, Réka introduces her take on the connection between nature and culture, exploring non-dualistic philosophies, mystical practices and other systems of spiritual exploration as possible pathways to reconcile the two.