Klaudia Januško’s solo exhibition Under My Knife takes the contradictions of the modifiable female body as its point of departure. Modification promises self-fashioning, while also conforming to norms that determine which bodies are considered desirable. Cosmetic interventions and customizable video-game characters are placed in relation to one another: each holds out the possibility of another version of the self.       

Female video-game characters have long recurred in Januško’s work. She turns fetishized images of women inside out while retaining something of the exaggerated and seductive visual language from which they emerge. Under My Knife extends this interest towards cosmetic intervention and the mutability of the physical body. Dry humour keeps the tension between violence and attraction unresolved.       

The exhibition takes the form of a staged operating theatre, where the instruments of intervention and the object world of video games begin to overlap. The visitor occupies an uncertain position between observer and potential patient. Monologues by video-game characters emerge from surgical bowls placed throughout the space, setting in-game death against the ageing and finitude of the physical body. The title Under My Knife condenses this ambiguity: the body can go under the knife, but so can the images and characters with which the artist works. The capacity to alter can signify both vulnerability and agency—there is a difference between being under the knife and being the one who holds it. Januško deliberately works with the appeal of this visual language; its attraction does not disappear once its critical stakes become apparent. The desire for self-fashioning and the demand to conform cannot be cleanly separated. Choice remains personal, even as its forms are shaped by images, technologies and social expectations. Altering the body is therefore not only a personal gesture, but also a response to social and economic systems that shape, value and make use of the female body—even as the tools of resistance remain entangled with the conditions they resist.       

Klaudia Januško is the winner of the 2025 Kassák Contemporary Art Prize. Under My Knife presents new works produced in connection with the prize. 

Klaudia Januško received her MA in Painting from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts in 2024. As an Erasmus scholar, she studied in Aalto University’s Visual Cultures, Curating and Contemporary Art (ViCCA) programme in Finland, and is currently enrolled in the Master’s Programme in Fine Art at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Since 2022, she has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including at acb Gallery, Trafó Gallery and the Studio of Young Artists’ Association, as well as in New York, Paris and Athens. Her recent solo exhibitions have been presented at V2 Gallery at Aalto University, Liget Gallery, acb Gallery and Művház.       
In 2024, Januško completed a curatorial internship at SÍM Residency in Iceland. She was a resident at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris in 2025 and at Goyki 3 Art Inkubator in Poland in 2026. In 2025, she received the Kassák Contemporary Art Prize and was a finalist for both the TÓTalJOY Prize and the MODEM Prize. Most recently, she received the ACAX Award, through which she will undertake a two-month residency at Residency Unlimited in New York in 2027, with support from the Trust for Mutual Understanding.       


  

Credits   

Klaudia Januško: Under My Knife   
Kassák Contemporary Art Prize 2025   

Opening: 9 October 2026, 6 pm   

Hungarian National Museum Public Collections Centre  Petőfi Literary Museum – Kassák Museum  
10 October 2026 – 7 February 2027   

Curator: Krisztián Gábor Török
 

Exhibition organization: Csatlós Judit Csatlós, Merse Pál Szeredi 
Visual identity:   
Graphic design: Klaudia Januško, Gábor Bogdándy, Vera Bodó 
Graphic assistant: Dorka Dénes, Fruzsina Siklódy
Editing: Judit Csatlós, Merse Pál Szeredi, Renáta Szikra
English translation: Krisztián Gábor Török 
Communication: Renáta Szikra 
Exhibition construction: MNU Creative Solutions, Ferenc Badak, Gábor Bogdándy, Alex Kovács
Special thanks to: Richárd Tóth, Tibor Gungl, István Árvai
Supporters: acb Gallery, KÉSZ Group