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For the 2026 Postgraduate Degree Show, Czech painter Michaela Å indlerová presents a triptych, all mixed media on canvas, including 'Icaruses', 'Then & Now' and 'A Prayer For Dopamine'. Alongside the triptych, another work - part of a series - will be shown. 

At the core of her practice, Michaela is grappling with questions about the relationship between the individual and the outside world, and how this can be expressed. Her process includes repeatedly redrawing outsourced photos and creating digital collages, which she then recontextualizes on canvas.

In seeking a form of expression more universal than language, she began to explore folklore and mythology – seeing the archetypes that have been passed down the generations in these tales as tools for expressing aspects of lived experiences that are shared between people and cultures. She has a particular interest in Czech and Slavic folklore, with folklorist K. J. Erben's "A Bouquet" collection of poems being a key inspiration. Michaela engages with Slavic myth as a framework through which questions of cultural memory are processed, including cultural memory of the Soviet era.

For Michaela, the two-year MFA helped her to focus her practice, with the timeframe forcing her to make decisions and the course guiding her to understand what tools were best to express what she is trying to depict. Michaela explained, "Goldsmiths helped me narrow down my vision. Being placed in this different environment forced me to see the position of Eastern European art in the contemporary art world."