The Architecture of Self-Betrayal is the first chapter of a larger research practice into how high-capacity women interrupt themselves before anyone on the outside can see it. Five sculptures, each a physical rendering of one stage in that architecture, built from birch plywood, natural rope, linen, and brass by the artist's own hand.
Restart Spiral opens the work — the woman who keeps beginning again, because finishing would mean someone could finally judge it. Well Gate follows — the woman who has given so long she no longer knows how to receive. Reverse Spear is the turning point — strength pointed backward, at who she used to be, instead of forward, at what she's building. Hollow Crown holds the identity inherited to stay safe, the one that worked so well it became a cage. Collision Line closes the exhibition without resolution — the first moment the performed self and the buried self meet directly.
Every groove, every embedded rope, every carved void was routed by hand to hold the exact shape of one pattern.
Obianuju Tóth is a Nigerian-born, Budapest-based artist, writer, and founder of ARTOMYSTIC, an independent research practice studying the behavioral structures through which capable women betray themselves.
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