Erzsébetváros, the municipality of Budapest’s 7th district , and the Photography Programme of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design first launchedt the Elizabeth A-i-R the international residency programme for artists in 2022, inviting proposals from all over the world by photographers and visual artists using the medium of photography and exploring with topics of the urban environment, urban resilience, and history, tradition, politics, and social conflicts embedded into the urban fabric. The programme is designed to provide opportunities to emerging  artists from different backgrounds to pursue creative paths while based in Budapest and create artwork reflecting on specifically Central European subjects. In 2023, Elizabeth A-i-R welcomed its first resident artist, German photographer Yuki Jungesblut.

This year's open call have received nearly sixty entries from thirty countries on five continents. The members of the jury were Renáta Gallai from Erzsébetváros, and teachers of MOME Photography Programme Judit Gellér, Gábor Arion Kudász, Gábor Máté, and Ábel Szalontai. Eight candidates were shortlisted to present their proposals online to the jury in January 2024: Alejandra Gonzales Aragon, Jack Faber, Volker Kreidler, Olha Yeriemieva, Miro Soarez, Egemen Tuncer, Chiaki Shimizu, and Erika Nina Suarez, with Mexican photographer Alejandra Gonzales Aragon emerging as the winner.

She will be able to enjoy a creative stay for two months in Budapest, starting in April 2024. Erzsébetváros will contribute a total of 2,500 Euros towards her travel, living and other expenses related to the realisation of her proposed project, while MOME will provide mentorship and consultation with its instructors, access to its facilities and opportunities to meet its students During her residency in Budapest, Aragon will participate in events at MOME, give a public presentation,  and offer insight into her work during an openday at her studio, with the results presented at a pop-up exhibition at the end of the programme.

Alejandra Aragón is from Ciudad Juárez, México. She works with various mediums, chiefly video, sound, photos, and found pictures, and is also interested in performative exercises. Her main focuses include gender issues, as well as intersections of home and identity, which she explores from a decolonisation and intersectional perspective, exposing often intimate experiences to the wider public so that her personal tone can provide survival strategies against the unstable realities of late-stage capitalism. 
In 2011 she received the PECDA Chihuahua scholarship, and was featured is several group exhibitions between 2013 and 2018 in Mexico, such as at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Toluca, the Centro de la Imagen, Fototeca de Zacatecas, and the Centro Cultural Tijuana B.C., as well as abroad, including the Kunsthalle Kade Museum in Holland, the Polygon Gallery in Canada, the Monat Der Fotografie Off Festival in Germany, then in 2020 in Georgia. Her documentary A Las Noches Invisibles was included in the ‘Coordenadas’ section of the Ambulante Film Festival in 2018, and in 2019 she received the FONCA Jávenes Creadores scholarship and the production grant If / Then of the Tribeca Film Institute for her documentary Disrupted Borders. She also attended Joop Swart’s master class at the World Press Photo 2020, and the Image Center Photography Seminar in 2017. She was nominated for the Oskar Barnack award in 2021, received the Border Change Narrative Grant from NALAC in the same year, went on to win the Latin American Sony World Photography Awards in 2022, and entered the National System of Creators of Mexico.  


Alejandra Aragón's website