Katarina Radović weaves the sophistication of her emotions and artistic sensibility into the photographs, by directing scenes and producing a series of wonderful frames, and simultaneously acting in them, playing with roles and costumes, photographic planes and reflections, but also with our acceptance of (sur)reality, myth and astrofantasy.
Sandi Bulimbašić, art historian
Inspired by a relationship in crisis (during Mercury retrograde, a period reportedly known to be unsettling in many ways), this project is the revived and adapted myth of Ariadne, Theseus and the Labyrinth in our lives, as one of the primary myths embedded in the collective unconscious. It speaks about emotional states, uncertainties, strengths and weaknesses, good and bad choices, upheavals, love, adultery, femininity, fertility... as well as confusions and diversions on the way to achieving emotional balance and wholeness. This recreated myth intertwines here with the planet Mercury’s eponymous Roman god (Greek twin Hermes), known for his winged shoes and for causing chaos, but also as someone who teaches us symbolic thinking. In this work, a new fictional visual story has been created, following the actual development of my own emotional states at the time. It consists of two parallel sections, one of which features the trickster god Mercury/Hermes and the other the Cretan princess Ariadne’s ordeal.
The project was realised during my artistic residency at the KURS Association in Split, Croatia in 2019, and was slightly upgraded in 2023. By transforming the ancient myth about Ariadne and impersonating various characters from ancient mythology, I examined and reflected symbolically my own love story, i.e., a ’betrayal with a happy ending’, through the prism of introspection, astrology and dreams. Thus, by placing it in an entirely new space-time context, I left it open to further interpretation.
The labyrinth here is a metaphor for the life path of the individual. There is no getting lost in a labyrinth. Its nooks and crannies are similar to those of the womb. Back in ancient times, labyrinths were designed with the intention of creating a ritual path back to the womb in order for a symbolic rebirth to occur – a path from the visible to the invisible world of the self, and then the return to the outside world.
Grieving as a result of Theseus’ betrayal – despite the fact that it was she who had helped him find his way back out of the labyrinth with a ball of thread after he had killed the Minotaur, it was Ariadne who eventually ’conquered’ the labyrinth, and thus symbolises endurance and strength of spirit. She ’missed the boat’ (or ’train’, as presented in the futuristic landscapes of de Chirico's paintings), and started a new life. Theseus may have been only a tool in the process of her personal development, while the ball of thread stands for her ingenuity and intuition. And perhaps, somewhere in our inner labyrinths, the Minotaur also fulfils a necessary role: the ’monstrous’ part of us that we must subdue in order to begin the process of creation.
What does Theseus represent for Ariadne in this version of the story? And where is he? And where is the god Dionysus? Or, does everything necessarily go wrong during Mercury retrograde? These are just some of the questions that arose during this period. At the same time, could it be that we all have something of these characters in ourselves?
Ariadne's Dream, FK Split, Croatia, 2021
Exhibition design: Christophe Gauci and Katarina Radović