They crept into their fathers sleep/
De krøp inn i sin fars søvn (2014-2016)
Kjæreste Kristian min, 2016, C-print with hand written letter, 60x60 cm
Untitled, 2016, Photography, C-print, 125x125 cm
My father sleeping, 2016, Photography, C-print, 60x60cm
Hair, 2016, Photography, C-print, 60x60cm
Untitled, 1945, Photography, 40cm x 60cm
Block 11, Auschwitz, 2016, Video in loop, 29cm x 38.6cm
Father & Daughter, 2016, Photography, 70 cm x 100 cm
Der lyset lander, 2016, Photography, 60 cm x 60 cm
Black wall, Auschwitz, 2016, Video in loop, 29 cm x 38.6 cm
Untitled, 2016, Photography, 60 cm x 84 cm
Cadillac 1954, 2016, photography, 60 cm x 60 cm
Sleeping barrack, 2016, Birkenau, Video in loop, 29 cm x 38.6 cm
Untitled 1948, Photography, 35 cm x 54 cm
Childhood home, 2016, Photography, 60 cm x 60 cm
They Crept into Their Father’s Sleep
An exhibition by Marie Sjøvold
In her exhibition They Crept into Their Father’s Sleep, Marie Sjøvold seeks to create a space for reflecting on traumas, memories, and dreams that sometimes even span generations. Can it be the case that the experiences of our forefathers during times of war can still affect our own and our children’s lives and dreams?
We live at a time when we are confronted every day with important questions about how we should receive people who are seeking refuge in Europe. Sjøvold wants this exhibition to raise awareness and to remind us that it was not so long ago that our own grandparents had to flee from persecution and face being put in concentration camps. The exhibition is intended as a venue where it is possible to talk about experiences that people in her grandfather’s time preferred to suppress, but that nonetheless rose to the surface at night and during sleep.
Sjøvold’s exhibition includes a photo installation that presents several layers of transparent photographs on lightboxes. These photographs were taken in 1945 and in 2016, in and around the house where her paternal grandfather lived after he came home from the Second World War, and that later became her father’s house and that is currently the home of Sjøvold and her own little family. The installation also includes three video tableaux filmed at Auschwitz-Birkenau in the same manner she photographed her own home, namely as seen in the light of her grandfather’s personal history. This lends the photos an everyday feel, even as a murkier undertone rise to the surface. This is an exhibition that explores the fragmented, ephemeral nature of memories and what gets passed down from previous generations – things that help shape who we are and what we believe we have experienced.
The exhibition is supported by the Fritt Ord foundation and Arts Council Norway.