Jaromír 99: The Castle

This year we commemorate the 140th anniversary of the birth of Franz Kafka - a Prague-born, German-writing author of Jewish origin who was considered one of the most influential literary figures of the past century. Through the illustrations by Jaromír 99 for a graphic novel, created in collaboration with David Zane Mairowitz, based on Kafka‘s novel „The Castle,“ we bring his work and ideas closer to contemporary viewers.

Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague, and his name is a symbol of Prague‘s German-language literature, reflecting the unique cultural and social atmosphere of the centuries-old coexistence of Czechs, Germans and Jews in the Central European region. Kafka‘s work resonates in the world with its timelessness. His books not only mirror the uncertainty and variability of that era but, also his inner conflict, giving his work a very distinctive character. Kafka‘s perception of societal changes at the turn of the 20th century and his sensitivity as both a person and a writer make his work timeless. We continually return to his texts, which warn us against falling into lethargy and urge us not to passively accept the absurdity of the times. However, his work contains much more, and it often depends on the reader how a particular text is interpreted and understood. Franz Kafka wrote a number of short stories and three novels - „America,“ „The Trial,“ and „The Castle,“ which remained unfinished. In 2024, it will be 100 years since his death, when he passed away at the age of only 41.

Jaromír 99
Jaromír 99, whose real name is Jaromír Švejdík, was born in 1963 in Czechoslovakia and moves between the worlds of comics and music. He is a composer, singer, guitarist, the frontman of the Kafka Band, and an artist. The series of prints created by Jaromír 99 in 2013 for a comic adaptation of the novel „The Castle“ are expressive black and white prints, first exhibited in 2020 as part of the Franz Kafka Festival in Frýdlantsko. The exhibition, located in the castle brewery, metaphorically illustrated the futile journey of the land surveyor K. to the castle, which stands on a hill within sight of the installation location.

The exhibited set is not a chronological narration of the famous unfinished story, but a series of visually powerful images with which Jaromír illustrated the writer‘s text. Everything is just suggestive, open to the imagination of the visitors. Lonely K. with his walking stick appeared from nowhere. Somewhere in the clouds, the castle appears to him. Elusive, indescribable, but beautifully magical and mysterious.

Through this installation, we would like to introduce a piece of Kafka‘s mysticism to passersby in the dimly lit winter streets of Stockholm.

We hope that viewers will stop and reflect for a moment on Kafka‘s work, the struggle of the individual against the vast world and its absurdity, bureaucracy, and injustice. They can ponder the task of each individual to question what is right and what is not.

The exhibition was prepared by the Czech Center Stockholm in cooperation with the Embassy of the Czech Republic in Stockholm.