BURNED · SV-054
And it happens again and again
One painting names the dead. It is the moral centre of the archive — a memorial built against forgetting.
On a red ground, two pencil portraits are framed by words: LOST & BURNED · HISTORY · FUTURE · BODY · MIND. Between them are three names — Oury Jalloh, Christy Schwundeck and Laya Condé — people who died in German custody. Under them runs a single line: and it happens again and again.
The researchers who studied Varga's studio documented the work under its working title, Repeating Circles. They described it as a memorial that constructs migrant memory against forgetting — and, as the painting itself insists, one that repeats.
A memorial is not a monument. A monument closes a story; a memorial keeps it open.
This is what Varga means by his credo, Art is action. The names are not decoration and not history safely past. They are written down so that a viewer in Cottbus, or anywhere, has to read them — once, and then again.