Flottilla – Unidentified Identifier
Exhibition of Róbert Nunkovics

For a long while, the abandoned, run-down building of the Petőfi Barracks in Újpest has attracted few visitors. Located far from the city centre, the neglected, overgrown site has been suspended between a glorious past and a bright future, and this in-between state allowed access to an area that would otherwise never permit entry either before or after. As a barracks, it had been a restricted area managed by the military, and soon it will house a newly built residential park, similarly hidden behind walls and fences.

But there were a few years when rust gnawed holes in the strict regulations, and those looking exactly for this freedom of marginalised urban spaces could slip through these gaps.

On the walls of the former barracks, a wide variety of inscriptions, tags and graffiti continued the long tradition of leaving marks: their creators marked the space and signalled their presence, much as the soldiers who once lived there had done before them.

The Petőfi Barracks had once been the base of the Honvéd River Flotilla of the Hungarian Defence Forces, a now disbanded but once legendary military unit whose tasks included ensuring the navigability of the Danube and Lake Balaton, post-war (and still ongoing) mine clearance, and –mainly in the event of floods – disaster response. After 1945 it had existed under various names and operational forms until it was disbanded following its reorganisation in 2001, its role taken over by the HDF 1^st Explosive Ordnance Disposal and Riverine Guard Regiment. This, however, marked the end of an era in which the Flotilla had undoubtedly been a singularly separate, coveted and envied elite unit within the defence forces, whose members enjoyed special freedom through navigation even within the closed world of the military. Its ranks were filled with dedicated soldiers extremely proud of their unit, most of whose entire lives were defined by their relationship to the Flotilla, a bond that has become somewhat romanticized over time.

However, the abandoned buildings of the barracks communicated little about all this. The original wall drawings, informational diagrams and remnants of inscriptions had lost their context, their messages remained unread. Yet such surfaces, laden with shipwrecked, abandoned meanings, still draw attention especially that of graffiti artists. Most often, signs are overlaid upon signs: new creators come along to overwrite or tag, their aim being not to archive or reveal the original message, but rather to divert or reclaim spaces, to circumvent or challenge rules. They operate in illegal territory, in a grey zone, their identities known only to one another.

Róbert Nunkovics visited the Petőfi Barracks as a graffiti artist, but upon encountering the pyrographs of NCO László Jakab in one of the barracks’ club rooms, his scribbler identity became enriched with new layers. The pyrographs salvaged from the building destined for destruction depict the Flotilla’s vessels and water scenes with allegorical figures. The works were left unsigned – we know the name of their creator from his fellow soldiers. By removing the pictures from the barracks, Nunkovics ensured their survival while also passing on the history of the Flotilla to an audience that likely had never heard of it, or if they had, had never encountered the soldiers in the unit or the personal episodes embedded in its history. Prying the pictures off the wall was not the gesture of a graffiti artist, but of an archivist: instead of overwriting, complementing or commenting, it opened up a space of exposure.

Nunkovics contacted the Riverine Warship Section of the Budapest Retired Personnel Club of the Hungarian Defence Forces, approaching several soldiers who had once served in the Flotilla, to collect stories around the otherwise silent pyrographs. In the interviews, the soldiers talked about the freedom offered by the river and riverine life, the dangers of flotilla duties, personal memories, and how their bond with the unit continues to determine their present. Fragments of these recollections can be heard in the exhibition in a space evocative of the club room, as if we were part of the conversations taking place there. Another layer of remembrance is presented by the video shown in the next space: the artist asked the soldiers to demonstrate a movement from those times that had been most deeply ingrained in them, recalled not by storytelling, but through body memory.

Having covertly entered the space of this history in the first place, the artist eventually joins the narrative himself, joining the speakers with his own account of what connects him to the Flotilla. His identity as a graffiti artist – one that conceals the creator’s identity (or reveals it only to a select few) – and his practice as a visual artist – one that uses visibility as a tool – ultimately converge in the demonstration of his chosen movement, tying the exhibition’s narrative back to its beginnings.

Special thanks to: Béla Búza, Sámson László Dömötör, István Erős, József Füzesi, Márton Gerencsér, Dáriusz Gwizdala, Gábor Hajdú, István Hocza, Ferenc Nótás Jr., József Iszlai, Péter Kalcsits, Tamás Budha Kovács, László Lengyel, István Nagyistók, Imre Szente, József Tóth

The exhibition was realized as part of the Budapest Gallery’s 2025 open call.