PAINTING
ZOÉ ACZÉL
(HUNGARY)
DETAILS
Mixed media on fabric
80.90 x 50 cm
2025
DESCRIPTION
Her artistic practice explores painting as a ritual and a portal, connecting the self with ancestral memory, spiritual structures, and the unseen world. Influenced by medieval imagery and the symbolism of The Great Chain of Being, her work reveals organic, body-like forms that reflect a deep connection between mind, soul, and nature.
Inspired by Jungian ideas of individuation and shadow work, she approaches the canvas as a space for inner transformation. Painting becomes a meditative act through which instinct, intuition, and presence guide the emergence of meaning. Music plays a central role, opening channels through which color and form flow freely.
Her process highlights the fluidity of self, the sacredness of materials, and the lasting imprint of gesture, much like inherited experiences that shape us silently over time. Paint sinking into fabric becomes a metaphor for trans-generational memory: appearing, disappearing, and returning.
Through this, she reclaims painting not just as a visual expression, but as a spiritual practice, an evolving dialogue between past and present, presence and absence, self and the collective.
BIOGRAPHY OF THE ARTIST
Zoe Aczel was born in Hungary, Budapest in 1998. She was a student of Gizella Rákoczy,
Barna and Mandula Péli throughout her upbringing. In 2020, she embarked on a journey
studying Fine Art, Painting at the University of Brighton, UK, where she began expanding on
her autobiographical approach. She worked as an Artist Assistant for Iva Troj in 2021. Aczel
graduated in 2023 and showed a series of works in the Brighton Summer Shows exploring
her family history, through responding to the writings and ornaments made by her grandfather
throughout his imprisonment in Arkhangelsk, a forced labour camp from 1944-1946. In 2023,
Aczel`s work was part of the ‘Sun and Moon’ Exhibition in Wuhan, China. Since then, Aczel
exhibited at Soho Beach House Brighton and took part in a group show at 19a Gallery,
Brighton.
Through experimenting with liminality, and a synesthetic response to music, Aczel explores
themes of identity, sexuality and trans-generational trauma. It is a form of introspection: a
confrontation of repressed memories born from inner turmoil: direct results of specific
moments in her life. Zoe creates biomorphic surreal landscapes that help reconnect with lost
loved ones and open pathways to self-discovery and healing. Aczel seeks peace, creating the
inner world on the outside allows her to wander liminal realms, where body and mind, living
and dead, wisdom and ancestors connect in symbiotic ways. Creating in-between realities
forces both the viewer and the artist to see the interconnectedness between the spiritual and
natural world, resulting in biomimetic structures, signalling an unknown but familiar force of
which we are all part of.