Eszter Szakács is a curator, researcher, and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Amsterdam. She has been appointed as the 2025 Curator of the Guest Programme of the 41st EVA International – Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art. With Naeem Mohaiemen, Szakács co-edited the anthology Solidarity Must Be Defended (2023). She curated the exhibition Dóra Maurer–SUMUS–We Are Together (2023) at de Appel, Amsterdam. Szakács was part of the curatorial team of the grassroots art initiative OFF-Biennale Budapest, who were a lumbung members and participant at documenta 15 (2022) in Kassel. She was also a curatorial team member in OFF-Biennale’s 2nd (2017) and 3rd edition (2021), and a member of the Eastern Europe Biennial Alliance team that collectively curated the 4th Kyiv Biennial (2021). Between 2011 and 2020, she worked as a curator and editor at tranzit/hu in Budapest.

The curator and researcher Eszter Szakács will speak about the complexities of Cold War solidarity projects in art and culture, examining their remnants from the perspective of the archive. Based on the recently published anthology Solidarity Must Be Defended (2023), co-edited with Naeem Mohaiemen, on visual arts projects exploring solidarity, realised and failed, within the Cold War era, her talk will contrast state-managed forms of solidarity organising with grassroots solidarity projects. Szakács will examine these through the lens of several contributions to the anthology: Hungarian propaganda publications from the socialist era about the "Arab World”, as well as the histories of state-initiated Pan-African festivals and artistic campaigns in Latin America.