BROTHER & SISTER

n Norway, on the Island of Halsnoy, there is a beautiful and mysterious house, which used to belong to a medieval monastery – Halsnoy Kloster in the 12th century. This house was rebuild in 1840s. I was invited to do an artist residency there, therefore I had an opportunity to live for nearly a month in this house. It is surrounded by myths and beliefs that continue thriving in the tales of local people, many of whom believe that this house is haunted. I was greatly inspired by this mysterious place located on the island and surrounded by the sea and forests. It immediately made me feel as if I was in the midst of a magical fairytale. I felt enchanted and mesmerized. I suddenly felt as if I was a child again. At the beginning of my stay at Halsnoy Kloster I had a wondrous encounter with little brother and sister – Marta and Mathias – who live on this island. This encounter was one of the decisive moments for creating this series. “BROTHER & SISTER ” is based on my personal observations of the relationship between Marta and Mathias, fairytales about brothers and sisters, my childhood memories, as well as the psychoanalytical book “Brothers and Sisters Discovering the Psychology of Companionship” written by Lara Newton - a former student of Carl Jung. This book is analyzing the brother-sister bond through myths, fairytales, and dreams. In line with Newton’s writings, I believe that the brother-sister bond is equally significant for the developmental, character-building and life-sustaining processes as the one of child-parent relationship. In conceiving this project I aimed to unveil the brother-sister bond not only as an external relationship between two siblings, but also as an archetypal and symbolic connection between conscious and subconscious and between feminine and masculine sides of each person’s psyche. The two protagonists in my series may also be perceived as a metaphorical duality of “our” psyche. In dreams and our subconscious the house represents the foundation of our soul.Therefore, in my story the brother & sister are starting their journey while being alone in this big and mysterious house. From this house they travel into the unknown (which is also represented by the woods). While searching for clues to understanding the world around them they are traveling between the internal and the external – the conscious and the subconscious spaces. In this magical journey they get to know each other and themselves, recognize the male-female differences as well as fight with the evil forces together.