It begins almost like a ridiculous fairy tale. Funny at first. Then… less so. Somewhere along the way, it becomes hard to tell who exactly we are laughing at. In the world of Czech artist Jakub Jansa, celery is ashamed of its origins and dreams of joining the elite society of avocados; a harmless mole from children’s culture suddenly becomes an instrument of cultural diplomacy. Jakub Jansa’s online solo exhibition at CIFRA runs from September 16 to November 10, bringing together eight episodes from his long-running "Club of Opportunities". The latter also forms part of the project with which Jakub Jansa and Selmeci Kocka Jusko represent the Czech Republic and Slovakia at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
Intro
An uncomfortable possibility begins to emerge: understanding the rules of the game does not necessarily mean escaping them. Recognising manipulation does not make us immune to it. Rejecting a hierarchy can simply make us want a better place within it. Jakub Jansa’s characters keep rewriting their histories, but every new version risks becoming another role to perform, another story to sell, another voice for someone else to borrow. And slowly, the distance between us and these strange heroes begins to shrink. Their ambitions feel oddly familiar. Somewhere between the celery, the mole, and ourselves, another question appears: who exactly is playing whom?
WATCH IN ORDER
This exhibition is best viewed in order. In "Club of Opportunities", not only the plot changes, but also Celeriac himself: first, he tries to understand why he was cast in this particular role, then to escape it, and towards the end, it's no longer so clear whether he's escaped the system or simply taken a different place within it.
Bowling Bar, 2017
It all begins in a Prague bowling alley. Philosopher Kamil Nábělek lectures on the ontology of celery root, the voice of a cartoon chipmunk dispenses instructions to the audience, and a baroque version of Rihanna's "We Found Love in a Hopeless Place" plays nearby. There's no Celeriac as a hero yet: there's simply a cheap, unremarkable vegetable that Jakub Jansa suddenly pulls from the bottom shelf and places at the center of his own mythology.
“The viewer’s comfort is part of my whole process. Attack comfort and you will gain attention. Maybe it’s some kind of attention trap.”
Jakub Jansa
April Showers Bring May Flowers, 2018
The Seer has a problem: she can no longer see the future. To regain some control, she begins tattooing young celery roots, assigning each one a good, socially beneficial fate. At first, this seems almost like caring — until a simple question arises: if someone has already decided for you what your good future should be, how much of it is yours?
My Name Is Red Herring, 2018
Red Herring appears for the first time — a hybrid of human and celery who refuses to accept the story of his own origins. He understands the most important thing: myth is just history, which means whoever controls history can change the rules. But instead of a beautiful liberation, something more interesting happens: Red Herring begins to use this mechanism himself and turns into a dark-side influencer. Understanding how power works turns out to be quite different from breaking free from it.
“The viewer’s comfort is part of my whole process. Attack comfort and you will gain attention. Maybe it’s some kind of attention trap.”
Jakub Jansa
Britannica Bootcamp, 2018
After "My Name Is Red Herring," the story pauses for a moment, as if trying to figure itself out. The guide returns us to the structure of this world, explains who's who, and lays out what's happened almost like a textbook — hence the strange mixture of encyclopedia, training, and instruction. This is the first real recap of "Club of Opportunities": we're finally invited to understand the rules, but at the same time reminded that those who explain history are always, a little bit, rewriting it.
Keeping in Line, 2018
Red Herring works at Avocado Bar and looks at those he would like to become: shiny avocados at the top of the vegetable social ladder. But now the main conflict is no longer between him and the outside world — he's split in two, arguing with himself, trying on other people's rules, and trying to figure out what he needs to be to finally be accepted. And now the hierarchy really starts to work: it no longer has to control you — you're perfectly capable of doing it yourself.
“I believe humor is one of the most essential weapons we have for resistance. It is not just about making people laugh.”
Jakub Jansa
Ten Years Night, 2019
By Ten Years Night, the world of Club of Opportunities has already accumulated its own history, characters, and rules, and Jakub Jansa pauses again. The narrator returns to the events of previous episodes, connects them, and discusses what can even be considered reality — in the celery root universe, of course. It's a recap with a catch: we finally get everything explained, but the more coherent the story becomes, the less certain we are that this is exactly how it all happened.
Shame to Pride, 2021
Celeriac finally gets what he wanted: he climbs the social ladder and finds himself among the avocados. But there's no happy ending — the old world is already lost, and the new one never feels like his own. Then he makes perhaps the most personal gesture in the entire Club: he speaks out loud about his own class origins. Here, social mobility ceases to be a ridiculous fantasy and becomes a question of how much of oneself one must leave behind on the way to the top.
Opening Ceremony, 2022
Now Celeriac is no longer an outsider — he's invited to entertain the elite and the media at the official Flower Union ceremony, created against the backdrop of the Czech Republic's EU Council Presidency. Decorative flowers, intended to gracefully stand alongside diplomacy, gradually come to life and try to establish their own voice. Jakub Jansa places art in a rather awkward position: what happens when work is invited to criticize power directly from its official stage?
"We’re no longer trapped inside a Truman Show against our will, but actively co-producing it"
Jakub Jansa
Pumpkinville, 2024
Celeriac left show business and now works as a detective at the Office for the Investigation of False Traditions. His new case is the Styrian pumpkin, a local "green gold" living in a perfectly crafted world, unaware of how much of it is fabricated. The protagonist, who once tried to expose the rules of the game, now discovers an industry producing them.
You may think you are only passing through. But stories assign parts without asking. Stay a little longer and make sure the role is truly yours now.
"The show isn’t a secret anymore; it’s a comfort zone, an economic model, sometimes even a survival strategy"
Jakub Jansa