Sára Babic Paldanová (SK)

Drawing is a form of slow observation. It requires time, patience, concentration, and presence. One must remain in one place just long enough to notice things that would remain invisible during a quick pass-through. People’s gestures, their facial expressions as you walk through the door, a handshake, the way a room is furnished, objects placed on a table, traces of yesterday’s theater performance that ended with a discussion at the bar, improvised solutions, architecture and para-architecture, boxes of equipment, endless miles of cables, flowers on the windowsill that someone looks after—everything that is useful, as well as that which long ago ceased to serve its original purpose—and, above all, energy. Sára becomes an observer / Beobachter.

Her marker drawings—sometimes subtly detailed, other times robustly rough—vividly capture both the place and the time the artist devoted to them. The result is not an objective document of reality but a selective choice, an artistic decision about what to notice and what to leave out of the picture, what to highlight, and what to emphasize. In this sense, it is also an act of care: to pay attention to something is to acknowledge its significance.

– Excerpt from a text by Zuzana Bodnárová and Svätopluk Mikyta, Banská St a nica Contemporary, August 2026

Sára Babic Paldanová (*2001)

In 2026, she completed her master’s degree in the Illustration and Graphic Arts Studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM). Her work focuses on drawing, reportage drawing, illustration, author’s books, silent books, and graphic arts. During an internship at the Haute école des arts du Rhin (HEAR) in Strasbourg, she began to focus more intensively on author’s books and visual storytelling without text. In 2026, she won the Golden Ribbon for her illustrations in the book Me, Tran, and Everything Else (KHER).

During her residency at the House of Arts, she is developing the project Beobachter, which was conceived during a previous travel residency in collaboration with Banská St a nica Contemporary in Banská Štiavnica. As part of the project, she visits and sketches cultural sites and centers in Slovakia, creating a personal and subjective record of them through her drawings.