"Mária Chilf was born in 1966, in Târgu Mureș, Romania. She studied at the Painting and Intermedia Department of the Hungarian University of Fine Arts Budapest and graduated in painting and teaching in 1995. From 1997 to 1998, she studied at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. She has been teaching at the Hungarian University of Fine Arts since 2009. Since 2016, she has been leading a class, and in 2022 she was appointed Associate Professor. In 2019, she earned a DLA degree. Her practice unfolds in a variety of mediums (painting, graphics, photography, video, installation, community art projects) and connects seemingly distant concepts and phenomena through sensitive associations. Her work explores the functioning mechanisms of the human body and the soul, and is closely related to neo-conceptual art. Also calling on intuition and superimposing layers, she was initially building her pieces from organic materials, quoting biological illustrations. In the last 20 years, her focus has turned to the inner world of the human being, exploring themes of trauma, healing and memory. In 2024, she received the AICA Award for Best Exhibition from the Hungarian Section of the International Association of Art Critics, sharing the award with another artist. She has exhibited extensively in Hungary and internationally, and her works are represented in museum and private collections."