Jaro Varga

Czech Republic

Jaro Varga is a Slovak visual artist and curator based in Prague, Czech Republic. He earned a master’s degree and doctorate from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, and also participated in student exchanges at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, the Academy of Fine Arts in Wroclaw and Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania in the USA. He has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad, including “Where do we go from here?” at the Vienna Secession (2010), “Public Folklore” at the Grazer Kunstverein in Graz (2011), “Delete” at the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava (2012), “Vulnerable Failures” at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul (2013), “City Diary” at the Triangle Arts Association in New York (2013), “Dysraphic City” at Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien in Berlin (2013), “When Artists Speak Truth” at The 8th Floor Gallery in New York (2016), Prague Biennale 6 (2013), Bucharest Biennale 7 (2016), “Missing Something and Itself Missing” at Ivan Gallery Bucharest, “About Books” at AlbumArte Rome (2018), “History is His Story” at NEST ruimte voor kunst, The Hague (2019) and many others.

As an artist in residence, Varga has worked at MuseumsQuartier 21 (Vienna), Futura (Prague), Heppen Transfer (Warsaw), AIR Krems, Center for Art and Architecture ZK/U (Berlin), Triangle Arts Association (New York), and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Seoul), DELFINA Foundation (London) among others.

Jaro Varga conditions the choreography of the visitor’s movement in a well-known space, or else he initiates the visitor’s translocation into unknown circumstances through fiction. He tries to construct new topographies and he wants to engage the visitor in a different understanding of the contexts relating to spaces otherwise stereotypically fixed in our memory.