The work of Radka Bodzewicz has long been rooted in literary inspirations—reading poetry, prose, and scholarly and philosophical texts. She takes the motifs and themes she finds in literature—which she perceives as timeless—and reinterprets them through her distinctive visual language into extensive series of images that are cohesive in both concept and expression, often combining classical artistic techniques with elements of new technologies.

In recent years, the artist has interpreted canonical works of world literature in this manner —Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, the epic poem Paradise Lost by the English poet John Milton, and the essay The Myth of the Eternal Return by the American religious scholar Mircea Eliade. For the exhibition at the DOX Center for Contemporary Art, she decided to continue her artistic reflection on another iconic literary work—Goethe’s Faust. 

Radka Bodzewicz understands the story of Doctor Faust as an expression of the Jungian principle of archetypes of human desire, which spring from deeply embedded patterns of experience and are —literarily (and simplistically) speaking—the motivation, driving force, and architect of human destinies. In the universal conflict between good and evil, Faust, as portrayed by Radka Bodzewicz, thus embodies our own stories: of the endless desire for knowledge, love, power, fame, or pushing the boundaries of what is possible—as well as the inevitability and irreversibility of our own decisions, our own pacts with the devil.

curator: Michaela Šilpochová