Milena in Profile

Surrealist figuration by Dominique Cheminais from her latest body of work A cage in search of a bird, based on her trilogy of books Many Shallows written around Franz Kafka's letters to Milena Jesenská, Felice Bauer, and Dora Diamant.

Many Shallows is divided into three parts, each one dedicated to a fantastical reimagining of each woman’s life. Instead of being the main character, Kafka is represented as a spectre or elemental spirit living in the forest, in each story he resides in a different location, down a well, in a windmill, at the centre of a maze. Through their dreams he communicates with the women, luring them into the heart of the forest, bestows on each a kind of metamorphosis, granting them freedom from the cages of their lives.