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THE GROUND TREMBLED
On the third morning of the St Peter and St Paul’s Day fair, the cobblestones of the high street split open, and clouds of smoke giving off a sulphurous stench emerged from beneath the ground; these caught fire and engulfed the ruined town in flames. The ground trembled for twenty days, the Danube burst its banks, sixty-three people lost their lives, and all the town’s churches collapsed. Not even ten years had passed since the great Lisbon earthquake, the immense devastation of which had prompted Voltaire to write "Candide" (1759) and to question Leibniz’s optimism. In the wake of this natural disaster, the local people presumably also reconsidered their previously privileged position and asked themselves: if such senseless catastrophes can befall us, is this really the best of all possible worlds? At that time, amidst the coexistence of rationalist worldviews and Christian truths – as depicted in Mór Jókai’s novel "The Condemned Family" (1858) – Christians attributed nature’s retaliation to their sins and to their intolerance towards Protestants.
The town of Komárom experienced the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the Carpathian Basin, which resulted in damage to the Limes Gallery and the former military chapel. The square, where we now stage exhibitions, is therefore of both sacred and historical significance; it preserves within it not only the sounds of the former organ and singing, but also the sounds of crumbling stone and supplication. The exhibition"The Ground Trembled" therefore presents contemporary artworks that, above all, capture the meanings hidden within the space, alluding to the reality of the earthquake and the mystical and spiritual explanations people have attached to it.
After experiencing the tension and buckling of the rock slabs, and the moment of the eruption itself, we invite the viewer to look down into the depths to confront the sight of bones, decomposing bodies and petrification – sights that human culture has, for centuries, banished to the realms of horror, the underworld and the subconscious, to the subterranean sphere. "The Ground Trembled" invites us to embark on a journey through an event of exceptional significance in the region’s history, in which we become aware of the transience of humankind as embodied spirit: the ground beneath our feet, which we take for granted as solid, may crack at any moment, and the body that gives us form may crumble to dust at any time. Central Europe is not exactly renowned for its natural disasters, yet this historical event helps us to visualise the moment of realignment: the moment when nature, which had been deemed predictable through meteorology and geology, struck back. Whilst in Komárom it was the Protestants who represented ‘the other’ – against whom Christianity had sinned by imposing a local ban on church-building – today it is nature, cast as ‘the other’, that is being rendered untenable by the techno-optimistic world system. After the most extreme summer of all time, we are reaching a point where we do not know whether to continue with our engineering efforts or to take up prayer once more, just as happened in parallel in the Empire of Maria Theresa in 1763.
The exhibition was on view from 12 September to 10 October 2026 at Galery Limes
Exhibiting artists: Júlia Csapó, Andrea Szilák, Zsuzsanna Ida Papp and Eszter Zsigrai
Curators: Luca Fábián
Collaborating partners: Liszt Intézet Pozsony, Füleky Pincészet, Magyar Alkotó Művészek Szlovákiai Egyesülete
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