ZSÓFIA SZÁSZ

On this page, I invite you to explore what I mean when I say: "I'm making contemporary embroidery."
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Over the past few years, my work has evolved into a search of new contexts for traditional Hungarian folk art techniques and motifs. This search spans three key areas: fine art, data art, and applied art. Alongside my practical work, I am also engaged in theoretical research, seeking to understand and expand the boundaries of our heritage.

If you’re curious to learn more about my projects, or if you're interested in collaborating, or in buying original works, please reach me out via email!

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fine art - Loveletters series

about the series

The search for love is a fundamental, subconscious motivation behind every human activity. The basic need of our social existence is the desire for the secure feeling of belonging to someone, a fragile fabric where even the most careful handling results in countless tiny wounds. These breaks either fade away or contribute to the overall picture. It depends solely on the individual whether they see the opportunity to build a new dimension from them, whether they use these gaps to create decoration, or anxiously watch as the foundation falls apart.
The unalterable fragility of dry, untreated leaves gives the works their basic tension. The viewer feels concern for their preservation, while the creative process arouses curiosity, urging a closer inspection. How does this fragile, thin material withstand the many pricks, holes, and wounds required to create the artwork? In the same way that our souls endure the small wounds of daily life, inflicted on one another by our very nature, by our presence, or even the absence of it in each other’s lives.
Works created from materials that are no longer alive can be viewed from many perspectives. They may represent something that has already lived its best days, or they may be a constant, eternal material. The decorative motif may be a delayed attempt to revive something, or a beautification of a process that has clearly come to an end, perhaps even a mere decoration. But it could also be a memory of a moment that never fades or an embodiment of a meeting that stays with us throughout our lives.
The traditional patterns carry the viewer back to a past that may not have been personally experienced but still feels familiar, comforting, while the unusual pairing of materials sparks fresh and timeless thoughts. Every leaf tells a different story, just as every romantic relationship is unique. Some are symmetrical, one-sided, irregular, some feature only one party truly present, some are complete, others ended before they even really began, and there are those whose thread has been released and it is uncertain whether it will ever be picked up again.
As I place elements of rarely seen folk art patterns on a foundation that departs from the classic on a fundamental level, aiming to create a truly contemporary series through this unusual pairing, I feel that this series also marks the solidification of the main theme of my own artistic practice.

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE CATALOG OF THE FULL SERIES FROM HERE!

fine art - "Layers" series

Award-winning works of the Férc -[Seam] - competition at The Museum of Ethnography in 2025.

Layers series part 1. - the base layer approximately a hundred years old

The works are based on textiles from the The Museum of Enthnography that do not fit into the collection but were deemed salvageable by the museum curators.

I took as a starting point the process that makes folk art come to life: that every generation has shaped something in the work of their predecessors. They added to the design, removed from it, changed the colors, or used different materials. Since, in this case, I do not wish to remove anything from the embroidered details of the textiles, the layered conceptual development of the pattern heritage is interpreted quite literally. The completed artworks received an additional embroidered layer.
The extra motif on the textiles is a magnified version of the simple cross-stitch floral pattern used in the Museum's visual materials, which is hand-embroidered in a color completely different from the base textile. This emphasize the time elapsed between the creation of the two layers, and also give the work a brand-conscious appearance for the Museum, without the viewer being confronted with a logo.
The resulting work of art—simple, yet complex, and entirely handmade—is a piece of fine art that took decades to create. It has a bold, complex new aesthetic that bridges generations, carrying both the traditions of the past and a new, modern design built upon them.

data art - working with Barabasilab

I have been working with the Boston-based network research group led by Albert-László Barabási since 2021.

A passage from the text presenting one of the previous exhibitions, which was held at the ACB Gallery in Budapest in 2023.
Further details of the exhibition can be found the ACB Galery's website.

"Barabási and his research team examined emergencies and disasters that occurred between January 2007 and January 2009, with a specific focus on their communication aspects. The complex diagrams on display in the exhibition space were generated from the mobile phone data of eyewitnesses present on the scene of these events. The primary question of the study was to determine how many times a witness or survivor of a tragic event calls someone on their mobile phone. The diagrams, originally created as graphs (complex networks), were reinterpreted by Barabási as embroidery patterns, converting the previous data visualizations into textile forms."

all the photo credits: acb galery

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"There are three textiles and a site-specific installation in the space of acb Attachment. The works reference and examine three real events, Barabási and his team processed the mobile data of a non-fatal bomb explosion in Pamplona, of a riot after a Real Madrid parade, and of a New Year’s Eve, because „mobile phones capture the location and the movement of their users, and their real-time communication which they perform in the deep network of the society. Thus the mobile phones start to function as remote sensors of installed on the site of emergencies.” The researchers classified the data into clusters, which range from the most to the least intensely communicating ones. The graphs show how intensely the cells used their mobile phones in the light of the ongoing event. The points and the polygons signify people and mobile numbers, whereas the lines, according to how dense they are, show how many calls the actors performed between each other.
The graphs created in 2011, a few years after the examined events, started to remind Albert-László Barabási of embroidery patterns. This is how the idea to create autonomous textile pieces from them, with the technical help of Zsófia Szász, occurred to him."

cross stitched embroidery in size 150 cm x 90 cm

vvda

At the center of my thinking, alongside the creation of new visual languages, is placing already existing fields in new contexts through the creation of novel pairings that, when observed from a distance, may appear different, yet, upon closer inspection, exist in perfect harmony like digital techniques and craftsmanship, or textile art and data visualization.

How far can we push the boundaries of visualization while still maintaining clarity? Can we view these charts as decoration? Is there a subcategory of data visualization that, while retaining the data, requires greater expertise to interpret, where understanding the data becomes a secondary consideration?

Every text, program, or electronic system has a binary code. Ones and zeros that, grouped in sets of eight characters, describe the electronic world surrounding modern humans. This binary system is the cornerstone of computer technology, with one representing “yes” and zero representing “no.” Everything that is considered fundamental to our modern digital life is built upon these ones and zeros.

This project is a unique, hand-crafted artwork that combines the aforementioned digital base technique, an evolved version of cross-stitch embroidery, and contemporary poetry, as the pattern is created from the binary code of Simon Márton’s poem Terms & Conditions.

I consider it very important that traditional Hungarian folk decorative patterns, which use embroidery, reappear in the globalized object culture. Naturally, in 2025, it is not expected that anyone, beyond inherited sympathy, will find an obvious connection with the elements of Hungarian folk art found in collections, which has been considered completed for over a hundred years. However, I feel that there is a growing societal need for a connection to one’s roots. The consumer group that has become dominant now consists of millennials who have the last living experiences of folklore, which they associate with their grandparents and nostalgically yearn to return to their peaceful offline world."

It is important to emphasize that throughout history, the reason so many distinct, region-specific embroidered patterns developed was that each generation of women who practiced the craft changed something in the design they had learned from their predecessors. Thus, the loose adherence to the rules drove the wheel of development, which has stopped in our country for the past century.
The parallel establishment of ethnographic collection institutions completely preserved the patterns of that time. Since then, they have only been maintained in their cataloged state by tradition-preserving groups, passed down unchanged. Of course, acknowledging the necessity and greatness of their ongoing work, I believe that in order for embroidered motifs to reappear in the material culture of the 21st century, their application must be fundamentally rethought and used in ways that have never been seen before."

The technique demonstrated in the prototype offers a wide range of interior design applications. It can be used for wall and partition elements, decorative fronts of furniture, or even as contemporary artwork in its own right. The wood and cord materials come in numerous variations in terms of properties and colors, allowing for both indoor and outdoor decorative applications. When crafted with polypropylene cord, the pattern becomes resistant to dirt, weatherproof, and washable, while natural hemp cord creates a truly sustainable design. Each embroidered stitch in the finished piece measures approximately 3 cm x 3 cm, but this size can vary significantly. This flexibility allows for endless design possibilities, while the wealth of Hungarian embroidery motifs provides a limitless source of familiar yet newly reimagined patterns. An important feature of the developed piece is that the decorated wooden panel can be backed with the same material as the front if desired. Due to the nature of embroidery, the reverse side is not as visually refined as the front, but this technique enables designs where both sides remain visible—making it ideal for partition elements or hinged furniture fronts.

final installation in the smallest gate

This gate is here since 1998

The concept of the decoration, based on the surface's characteristics, uses the classic cross-stitch embroidery technique, with the white pattern embroidered into the gate’s grille. The meeting of the traditional tendril motif and the market's new branding elements creates a fresh yet surprisingly familiar blend.

The visual representation of both the tradition of visiting the market and the site’s innovative intentions gives the planned pattern its harmony, placing both folk art elements and the act of market-going into a contemporary context.

The site-specific decoration is designed in such a way that each panel is unique, yet they flow into each other, featuring a continuous vine motif depicted in cross-stitch, in line with the branding elements.

Zsófia Szász

CV

Freelancer embroidery artist and working part time with barabasilab as a textile artist since 2021

APPEARANCES

2024
- EXXPOSE - 360 Design Budapest - cross-stitched oak wood wall panel
- I feel... - group show by Studio of Young Designers Association
- ELLE EDIDA - Nominee for Young Designer Talent of the Year
- damagedrythm -Telep Gallery, Budapest- collaborative exhibition
- gate embroidery - Fény Street Market, Budapest - cross-stitched (~30m²)
- Fake News - BARABASILAB - Futuros, Rio de Janeiro

2023
- Alarm Chain - BARABASILAB - ACB Gallery, Budapest
- The threads of everything - Ozora Festival - experimental embroidery
- Hidden patterns - BARABASILAB - Mureș County Museum, Târgu Mureș

2022
- Terms & conditions - 360 Design Budapest - binary code embroidery
- Hidden patterns - BARABASILAB - Szekler Museum of Cius, Miercurea Cius

For my not embroidered works, scroll down on my Instagram page to before 2021!

ZSÓFIA SZÁSZ

fine art - Loveletters series

about the series

fine art - "Layers" series

Award-winning works of the Férc -[Seam] - competition at The Museum of Ethnography in 2025.

The works are based on textiles from the The Museum of Enthnography that do not fit into the collection but were deemed salvageable by the museum curators.

data art - working with Barabasilab

c

you can find details and work in progress photos from this project here

data art - embroidery from a binary and QR code

I created an expansive cross-stitch artwork based on the binary code of contemporary Hungarian poet Simon Márton's Terms & Conditions poem.

vvda

applied art - exxpose

nlh

EXXPOSE

applied art - gate embroidery

Embroidered gate decoration for the entrance gates of Fény Utcai Piac, one of Budapest's largest markets. Due to the nature of the installation, it will remain a part of the cityscape in the long term.

This gate is here since 1998

CV