Sa Sa Art Projects is pleased to welcome you to the open studio of our former Pisaot Artist-in-Residence Jaro Varga, who has spent 8 weeks researching and experimenting on new works. This residency is supported using public funding by Slovak Arts Council.

During his residency at Sa Sa Art Projects, Jaro Varga was intrigued by the phenomenon of the emergence of a new satellite city inspired by European imperial architecture on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. While exploring unfinished and imposing Paris-like boulevards and eclectic residential districts, the artist reflected on the newly emerging heterotopic public space. The result of his investigation is a fictional intent to install an original mosaic as a public artwork in situ, which would represent a subversive reflection of the place but also a critique of anachronistic cultural imports. Through the mosaic, a European art technique, the artist transforms a fragment of a traditional painting from the epic Reamker, a Khmer adaptation of the Ramayana, depicting Hanuman and Suvannamaccha touching hands. The touch of hands - the touch of cultures, can signify love, friendship but also oppression and domination.

About artist:

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.