About me

Eva Suhajek (1996) is a painter and installation artist from Prague, Czech Republic, living and working in London, UK.

In my artwork the undigested mental content of the day creates new situations where different forms meet to create alternatives to what we know. My on-going subject is painting going beyond its frame. I am blending the distinction between 2D/3D and make use of colours, patterns and forms to create large-scale painterly installations. The crucial element in my painting language is the performance of colour as a spiritual force that causes an immediate emotional response.

I am interested in playful engagement with the audience. Playfulness is a key approach in my artistic practice, but equally my understanding and perception of the world as such. I look at it as a tool for emancipation, a tool for becoming liberated from social and political restrictions. By creating encounters in forms of installations in public space as well as formal institutions I am continuing to explore the moment when play happens. This moment of participation is an ephemeral and hard to describe instance, where one is present and open to carefree engagement.

Inseparable from my work is my love of poetry - one of my favourite forms of play, using words and emotions to incapsulate personal meaning. I use it as a form of my emotional research and as a tool to listen carefully and empathetically to my soul. My poems reflect my in-depth experience in this world and complement and support my art practice.

My work is informed by concepts of Jungian Analysis such as dreams, symbols, active imagination or Sandplay therapy. My relationship to Jungian Analysis developed through my interest in Sandplay therapy- a nonverbal, therapeutic intervention that makes use of a sandbox, toy figures, and sometimes water, to create scenes of miniature worlds that reflect a person’s inner thoughts, struggles, and concerns. Through the tangible emergence of personal and archetypal symbols, Sandplay has the possibility of leading the client into layers of experience that are often preverbal and long forgotten to the conscious mind.

I can see art installations having a capacity to act as sanctuaries for contact with the unconscious world out of which can emerge a real healing experience. This goes beyond the traditional understanding of art in a pluralistic environment of artistic practice, curating and psychotherapy.

— Curriculum Vitae