Jelisaveta Rapaić: WeAreOpen
pop-up hair salon in the Park of Culture and Sighs
Friday–Saturday, February 6–7, 2026, 1:00 - 6:00 pm
Ján Koniarek Gallery in Trnava, adress: Zelený kríčok 3, Trnava
At WeAreOpen Jelisaveta Rapaić offers haircuts in exchange for other goods and services agreed upon between the client/participant/patient and the artist/hairdresser/therapist before, during, or after the therapy session. The desired hairstyle is also agreed upon, everything is consensual.
To get a haircut, you need to book an appointment in advance using this registration form.
Jelisaveta Rapaić asked herself selfishly, “If the world were to end tomorrow, what would be my unfulfilled wish?”— to be a hairdresser. Out of a dormitory room, on March 15, 2020, as all hair salons were forced to close their doors, WeAreOpen, a pop-up hair salon offering hair-cutting therapy sessions in exchange for goods and services, was born. Secretly marketed through Instagram, the project made both the artist and her space available to others, engaging in a perverse game of learning a skill, trusting, bravery, therapy, value, and touch—at a time when touch was scarce. To this day, the project remains ongoing – in a sense. While Jelisaveta no longer offers her personal space, the salon has continued to appear in exhibition settings, allowing the artist to explore the possibility of constructing safe spaces, and to question the existence of false care systems that society claims to have in place.
WeAreOpen is part of the Park of Culture and Sighs. The core of the Park of Culture and Sighs at the Ján Koniarek Gallery in Trnava is a variable structure made of plastic crates filled with energy drinks, which keep us in a state of constant productivity, help us fight fatigue, and deny our own limits and needs. The program consists of regular events—performances, discussions, support groups, workshops—prepared on the basis of an open call by members of the Cultural Trade Unions (Kultúrne odbory).
Jelisaveta Rapaić is an artist, independent curator, researcher and educator from Belgrade (Serbia), based in Bratislava (Slovakia). She holds a bachelor of textile design from the Faculty of Applied Arts, in Belgrade (2019) and a Master’s in Intermedia from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (2021), where she is currently a candidate for a PhD in Art Theory with a research topic Feminist interpretations in contemporary textile and fiber art. Until 2024 she worked as a public program curator and PR for Kunsthalle Bratislava and since 2020 she runs a pop-up hair salon where she offers hair cutting therapy sessions in exchange for other goods and services.
The partner of the Park of Culture and Sighs is KON-RAD spol s.r.o.
photos: WeAreOpen, WHW, Ribnjak, Zagreb, 2025, photo by Sanja Bistričić Srića
