Varga Domonkos: City Without Walls

"Like a ruined city without walls, is a man without self-control."

Within a few years, the proportion of urban dwellers to the total population of the Earth will exceed 60%, finally upsetting the balance between rural areas and cities. The future of globalisation and urbanisation seems unquestionable.

In his series, Domonkos Varga questions the humanism assumed in the infinitely developed infrastructure of late capitalism. His image-based research contrasts with the general optimism about our improving quality of life.

Using the city as a symbol, he seeks to show how the zeitgeist shames the human ethos by promoting unsustainable development and the system that oversees it over human ethological needs.

The combination of figurative images and purely theoretical texts reveals the determinant power of the built environment, the multiplying mental problems and the threads that intertwine the existing political-economic system in the image of the modern city. For it is in today's cities that ideologies are embodied which polarise us more strongly than ever before and make us more vulnerable and individualistic.

The exhibited texts and images are also available at the links below: https://domonkosvarga.com/portfolio/city-without-walls/

Domonkos Varga (born 1998) is a visual artist and photographer from Budapest. His work presents the phenomena of socio-economics and socio-politics from the perspective of his generation.

He is committed to drawing attention to problematic contemporary phenomena. His projects, grounded in ongoing theoretical research, aim to deconstruct these phenomena and ideologies through the telling silence of the photograph.

Domonkos studied photography at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design and Aalto University.

He is a member of the Studio for Young Photographers, a former selected artist of the Parallel Photo Platform programme and a special jury prize winner of the OD Photo Prize 2022.

Curator: Tamás Domonkos Németh