i'm varvara pekhota and i'm excited about things going wrong, blurriness and digital uncertainty,,,

@varvarapekhota



                           
                                                                                                                                       
                               
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

2026: group exhibition ‘You’ve reached the center. Please hold’, ArtEZ finals, Arnhem; group exhibition ‘Digital Alchemy’, @ Dokzaal, Amsterdam; group exhibition ‘What I did last summer’, @ Rietveld Pavilion, Amsterdam; 2025: group exhibition COMPUTALA, Leicester; window exhibition ‘[sickly{sweet}(de)composing’, @ SWSW69 Arnhem; 2024: Media Arts Festival , Arnhem; 2021: group exhibition ‘Lines of Communication’, @ Pennlab Gallery, Moscow;

SaaS™☁︎℠: Working Towards Living.


(2026)

The imaginary software corporation SaaS™☁︎℠ is about to open a customer experience hub. The visitor is invited to submit to the uncomfortable reality of being a customer. 

Three artworks touch upon different forms of this condition.  

“Fountain (2027)”, made in collaboration with Isaac van den Aker, is a welcome drink fountain connected to a cooler of a PC running the corporation’s essential yet unknown tasks. Unpackaged but recognizable Redbull is a residue of this activity. The customer is free to enjoy it from a hostile architecture cup provided by the corporation. 

“Activating Super Intelligence” is shown on a broken screen. It is based on found video "Demo: Elevating the Seller Experience | Salesforce" preaching the use of AI agents in selling processes. It is digitally put up as a waving flag and layered with the sound from a YouTube video “Activate Super Intelligence | Improve Focus, Concentration and Memory | 528hz Binaural Beats”. 

“Interface ⇨ Exhaust ⇨ Exceed” is a self-checkout station that entertains the customer into performing work. A series of satisfying interfacing exchanges effectively allows the customer to turn into a worker before they even suspect. 


Exhibited at ArtEZ finals 2026.





View at You’ve reached the center. Please hold finals exhibition




Fountain (2027)
(2026)



Collaboration with Isaac van den Aker
Fancy a welcome drink? 

The vitalising presence of the Red Bull Fountain is a refreshing source of energy that leaves no residue: the customer is invited to unwind while the flow of energising liquid is circulating through the Lian Li Galahad II CPU cooler. 

This advanced cooling solution allows for essential tasks to be performed swiftly, painlessly and nearly unnoticeably.

Part of ArtEZ graduation work “SaaS™☁︎℠: Working Towards Living”

Exhibited at Digital Alchemy exhibition @ Dokzaal, May 2026.





 Fountain (2027) installation documentation at Dokzaal




Activating Super Intelligence
(2026)



The found Salesforce promotional material "Demo: Elevating the Seller Experience | Salesforce" is combined with the video "Activate Super Intelligence | Improve Focus, Concentration and Memory | 528hz Binaural Beats".

Part of ArtEZ graduation work “SaaS™☁︎℠: Working Towards Living”





 
Activating Super Intelligence: full video



Activating Super Intelligence: presentation experience




*-*-•*-*-*
(2025)
a raspberry pi is housing a machine vision algorithm detecting blobs in pictures. 

we hear the bubbles pop in the stream of outsourced joy.






*-*-•*-*-* installation documentation




eternal 
🫛🥒🥬🥦🥗🥝🍈🍋‍🟩🥟🌯🥔🌭🍍
 
soup

(2024)
artificial intelligence aims to produce photorealistic image and enhance the existing ones to 4k, while spending as much computing power as can be physically possible

a gif feels like a file that can't be bigger than 300kb

my custom LORA is trained on an archive of blingee gifs, whose palimpsestic structure has been a subject of various net art works

 due to the structure of ComfyUI, it was possible to create a circular cross-referential workflow, generating ingredients of the future eternal soup: water, vegetables, meat and herbs. as a new generation of an ingredient appears, the soup updates, while staying the same soup of theseus








comfyUI workflow & the soup




[sickly{sweet}(de)composing

(2024)

the work explores mixamo as a collection of movements that constitute a norm to be perceived. the screens display a body, dying  “normally”, over and over again - differently every time



The doctor called, the 
results came in.  he says that        im 
laying severe coughing, 
            hit by car.   
Is your body 
insured?  
As my kilobytes.        take a pill.  
injured 
hurting idle.        
Paracetamol.  Folders         and folders and                     folders they are whispering.   tonic seizure. 
                Hit by car. 







installation documentation






also as seen on display @ swsws69; documentation by Eva van Boxtel <3










primary substances

(2024)


Everything consists of and participates in interconnected complex systems; all things are synthesized and lie at the border between what was called nature and what may be called artificial.  

Plastic can be the physical expression of this blurriness. Its uncanny structure is loaded with everchanging connotations ranging from futuristic, to kitsch, to the dreadful vastness of the oil industry - and forth.

A plastic toy dinosaur may or may not be made from a regular dinosaur. A wall is made from the same calcium as the egg laying next to it. Maybe a part of this dinosaur has already seen that plastic patch of grass...
























caring eye

(2024)
“caring eye”  is a video art and installation based on google maps 3d data

    moving slowly and unstably through the landscapes of the
    netherlands, the viewer is put in a perplexing (or perplexed)
    position. through whose eyes are they looking? what is their
    role in this act of surveillance? are they even meant to see
    what they're watching? these questions gain urgency with
    (alleged) authenticity of data. 

    staged in unreal engine and borrowing relevant information
    from google maps api, the work questions the mediation of
    the environment through the data infrastructures - and the
    way we build relationships with those images



“caring eye” video excerpt




installation view





ios trespassing pack

(2024)
    the rounded-rectangular 'snooze -- add to the calendar’
    accept free trial' button is the shape of commodified utility

    it is one of the basic parts of swiftUI, the coding language
    designed by apple to make most apps existing today.
    i misuse this language by not trying to make profit out of
    it; instead, i trespass this boring ecosystem to see its limits


ios trespassing: apple maps



ios trespassing: more



ios trespassing: animation




misreding

(2024)
    the biggest wisdom comes from thewise people's words,
    accidentally misread

    based on a common issue of havingto read curatorial texts
    in a hurry, this website takes the best out of that experience
    and makes the user misread a randomly picked hans ulrich
    obrist quote





“misreding” video documentation of a website



new! also upgraded to a google chrome extention! now you can misread any of your favourite wise words!


“misreding”, browser extension documentation







image making

(2023)
    where does an image seize to be?

    how many layers of cables, shields and filters can we strip
    off of a screen and still see one?

    this visual synthesizer passing current through the leftovers
    of an lcd screen is an attempt to grasp this question




“image making” video documentation






🦠

(2023)
      the environment of the gut bacteria is also an actor:
      it’s the human themselves. the relationship between
      the human and their body carries almost mystical
      character; trying to affect the bacteria (which
      performed. 

    a fluctuation between the promise of serotonin and whatever comes next becomes a mysticist run.

    the viewer is invited to affect the digitally represented bacteria.

















      who is julia

      (2023)
      “who is julia?” is a short movie set within the interface of touchdesigner. despite being primarily utilitarian, the interface can become an environment for a playful narrative. it creates miscommunication and shapes the dialog with the viewer, making them question the existing cliches of the software.

      for example - who the fuck is julia?




      “who is julia”, full video work






      deb’s eclipses
      (2023)
      collab with Lisa Ziebermayr.

      a camera as a pov, a solar eclipse as a deep manifestation of a pov

      solar eclipses are extremely rare and place-dependent. you need to happen to be in a specific patch of land at a specific time to be able to experience one

      contemplating this, Lisa and i trained an stable diffusion lora based on grainy images from my nokia, and generated images of solar eclipses that my phone would never see. now we have an imaginary archive of a person who did























      “deb’s eclipses” installation view





      excel,
          turned into a useful tool

      (2023)
      Excel is a popular life-enhancing tool for productivity. Even the clouds are 3D and glowy here!

      you are invited on a journey of breathtaking planning and dreamy time-management






      “excel, turned into a useful tool”, documentation of the work