Artist Name: Libuše Jarcovjáková
Residency Dates: June 2026
Born: 1952
Hometown: Prague, CZ
Lives & Works: Prague, CZ
URL: jarcovjakova.com | Instagram: @libusejarcovjakova
Education:
2022–2025 – PhD in progress, Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art University of West Bohemia
1982 – MA FAMU–Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague / Department of Photography
1972 – Higher Professional and Secondary Technical School of Graphics, Prague Department of Photography
Bio/Statement:
Libuše Jarcovjáková is a photographer and visual storyteller based in Prague. Her raw, atmospheric photographic language stands as an authentic, deeply personal record of intimacy, self-reflection, and marginalized communities. Emerging from the 1970s and 80s Czechoslovak underground, her style blends uncompromising rawness with poetry, capturing life under socialism—specifically nightlife, the street, bars, and the Prague LGBTQ+ scene—in its purest state. Characterized by a visual spontaneity, Jarcovjáková works mostly with analogue black-and-white photography, utilizing high-grain film and harsh, direct flash at unexpected angles that capture subjects unawares. Over the past two decades, her practice has expanded to an open form, combining analogue with contemporary digital clusters and mobile phone photography. Unafraid of imperfection, her work explores themes of freedom within confinement, identity, love, depression, and the compulsive need to record the absolute present.
Her solo retrospective, Libuše Jarcovjáková, was presented at the National Gallery Prague, Veletržní palác, CZ (2024–2025). Jarcovjáková’s solo exhibitions include: T-Club series solo shows in Berlin (KVOST, European Month of Photography, 2025), Stockholm (CFF, 2024), Lisbon (Trumps, 2024), Warsaw (BWA, 2024), and Madrid (PhotoEspaña, 2022); Evokativ, Les Rencontres d’Arles, FR (2019). She has participated in group exhibitions, such as FotoFest Biennale, Houston, USA (2024), and Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s–1980s, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA (2022; toured to Vancouver & Phoenix, 2023). Among her publications are Supersonico² (2025), T-Club (1st and 2nd ed., 2024), Supersonico (2022), Evokativ (2019) – all Untitled Publishing; Černé roky (wo-men publishing, 2016).
Libuše Jarcovjáková has received the following awards: Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, FR (2022); Czech Photographer & Book of the Year 2019 and 2022; longlisted for Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2019, 2025); shortlisted for Paris Photo-Aperture PhotoBook Award (2019). The feature documentary about Libuše Jarcovjáková – I’m Not Everything I Want to Be (2024, directed by Klára Tasovská) – premiered at Berlinale 2024, received multiple awards, and was the Czech submission for the Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards.
Support: Libuše Jarcovjáková’s residency is initiated and supported by Czech Center New York.
