Reused explores the visual and linguistic parallels between political communication during the Hungarian socialist era and the previous government's messaging before the 2026 elections, an election that brought this way of communicating to an end.
Through a 70-day word frequency analysis in pro-government articles and archival research into political posters and billboards from both eras, the work makes visible a pattern that persisted across seventy years of Hungarian political communication: the same construction of fear, enemy image, and national unity, reused.
The installation consists of three objects: a jacquard-woven tapestry, an old television, and an original pro-government Hungarian newspaper from the last day before the 2026 elections. The tapestry is the central piece. It is built from the 11 most frequently used words found in the 70-day word frequency analysis in pro-government articles: UKRAINE, WAR, NATION, MUST, BRUSSELS, PEACE, MIGRATION, PROTECTION, DANGER, LEFT WING, SOVEREIGNTY. Each word appears exactly as many times as it was recorded in the data. Together they form the image—the words themselves become the visual layer, placed directly onto archival imagery from the 1950s.
The television runs a looped sequence of communist-era Hungarian visuals, isolating the recurring gestures and imagery that formed the visual language of 1950s propaganda. The newspaper is overlaid with a screenprinted typographic layer using the same visual language as the tapestry. Each spread shows a different piece of information from the research, helping the viewer understand where the words come from and how to read the tapestry.
