Battling Queer Erasure: Orbán’s new ban on Pride
Written by Julia Hargitai
This article comes to you in dark times. On Tuesday 18th March 2025, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán banned Pride, with the reasoning being to ‘protect children from LGBTQ+ propaganda’. To counter the efforts of queer erasure, I would like to call attention to some queer Hungarian artists who actively work against the system and towards uniting the community and allies to stand against the sea of oppression across the globe.
While homosexuality was decriminalised in Hungary in 1961 and the country held its first Pride in 1997, Hungarian governments have been largely unaccepting towards the LGBTQ+ community. In recent years, the right-ruling party Fidesz has continuously tried to erase such identities from constitutional rights. Most recently, in late February the party announced their plans to ban Pride in its public form nationwide, and on 17th March they proposed the amendment of the Assembly Act. The next day, the Parliament passed the amendment, with far-right lawmakers voting in favour while liberal representatives protested the vote with smoke bombs. In addition, according to the ban organising or participating in any event that goes against the ‘Child Protection Act’ is punishable by a fine between 6,500 and 200,000 Hungarian Forints (equivalent to around £13 to £425). The ban also allows the use of facial recognition programs for the police to identify ‘perpetrators’.
For the past couple of years, the ruling party has been weaponizing policies to erase sexual minorities. In the summer of 2020, the legal recognition of transgendered identities ended, and in the following year the ‘Child Protection Act’ was introduced. This law aims to restrict LGBTQ+ education and media in schools, which included foiling up books in bookstores with ‘unwanted content’, blocking same-sex couples from adopting, and framing those with LGBTQ+ identities as paedophiles. However, the party itself has betrayed its own ‘child protection’ policies; in 2024 President Katalin Novák resigned after being exposed for having pardoned a man who was responsible for covering up sexual abuse at a children’s home.
Hungarian queer culture lacks the freedom to create art surrounding LGBTQ+ themes, as the community faces constant oppression, stigmatisation, and homophobia. Larger art institutions that underwent the ‘Orbanisation’ of recent years are still hostile towards tackling queer themes. However, this does not stop artists from representing their identities and from forming island communities. The following list only introduces a handful of contemporary Hungarian artists, but I hope to shed light on the bravery of using art to fight systematic oppression, and to start a conversation with a wider audience.
Barnabás Lakatos Gelléri
Lakatos Gelléri has succeeded in establishing his trademark on the Hungarian scene. He defines his style as a mixture of 90s-kid aesthetics and post-internet paintings. His works are sensuous, expressive, and symbolic; he creates timeless and vibrant compositions. His figures are mythological, resembling personified animals and fairy tales. He uses his figures to create a narrative of culture and private mythology. He employs innovative techniques to create gestural paintings and to shape the fragments of his figures.
Gideon Horváth
Horváth is a Hungarian-French visual artist based in Budapest who mainly works with sculptural installations. Horváth is particularly interested in exploring ecology and new materialism alongside his queer community-related themes. He likes to work with beeswax, a material that is fragile but resilient, fluid, ambivalent, and constantly changing – qualities that align with the artist's central interests. Together with Anna Zilahi and Rita Süveges, he is the co-founder of the group called xtro realm. The group focuses on utilising new realism styles to deal with the issue surrounding the environmental crisis.
Ádám Dallos
Ádám Dallos is an emerging young Hungarian artist, who most directly engages with his own queer identity. His paintings have a unique strength to them, but there is still sensitivity on the canvas. He often depicts men, animals, mythical bodies, or himself. Dallos frequently uses his memories of his childhood in his works, both in terms of colour and figures. In 2010 he was featured in the exhibition Ars Homo Erotica at the National Museum in Warsaw, a significant event in the queer history of Eastern Europe. He has recently been the recipient of the Herczeg Klára Award in the junior category.
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