Franz Kafka's world was one that was crushed by a meaningless bureaucratic society and lost without a sense of identity, and this malaise in modern society remains nightmarishly relevant. As part of the "Unfolding Kafka Festival", the exhibition "K: KafKa In KomiKs" is taking place Goethe Institute running from Nov 7 until Dec 17.
Bangkok is the latest stop on the exhibition's travels having visited Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Poland and the UK, proving that the Czech author's work is borderless and still relevant even after almost a century.
The exhibition has been curated by David Zane Mairowitz and Malgorzata Zerwe, and centres on the work of three graphic artists who interpreted the dark imagination of Kafka. Over the past several decades, Kafka's work has inspired numerous artistic creations, but it has always been a challenge to succeed by remaining faithful to the original work while being able to translate into a new creation the essence of a Kafkaesque world, which is as imaginative as much as it is grotesque.
The exhibition unites three graphic novels, the result of different artistic collaborations between Mairowitz and three illustrators: Das Schloss illustrated by the French illustrator Chantal Montellier, Der Prozess illustrated by the Czech Jaromir 99, and excerpts from Introducing Kafka by the American comic pioneer Robert Crumb. The three artists' visions come together with enlarged images, reminding us of the graffiti aesthetic, which treat recurring Kafka's themes like animalism and crossbreeding, sex and women, death and tragedy.
Mairowitz, one of the curators, talks to us about the exhibition.
How is Kafka's work still relevant today, and while doing the exhibition, what did you learn about the man or his work?
Kafka is still relevant today because he is essentially writing about bureaucracy. Many of the world's problems come from that. What I continue to learn about Kafka, even before the exhibition, is his humour. This is something most people don't understand, in part because the translations are so bad. Humour, of a self-denigrating kind, is the mark of Kafka.
What is the aim of the exhibition?
The exhibition aims to unite the three illustrators with whom I created these three books: Robert Crumb, Chantal Montellier and Jaromir 99. And to show that Kafka can be appreciated on this simple level, and not only in the universities.
There seems to be three main themes from the artwork at the exhibition: animals and crossbreeding, sex and women, death and tragedy. What exactly interested you in the graphic novel to represent Kafka's work?
All of the themes you mention are Kafka's. He fits perfectly into the comic form because of his fantasy world, which in large part, has to do with animals. Just consider: a man wakes up from disturbing dreams to find he has been transformed into an insect. This is already comic book material.
The chosen graphic novels are all in black and white. Is there any purpose or reason?
Money. Colour is just too expensive. But Kafka's world is anyway more or less black and white.
From the three artists that you selected for the exhibition, who best captures the essence of Kafka's work?
They all have some relation to Kafka, but Robert Crumb is in many ways Kafka. He feels very close personally to the author.
