Helga Härenstam - Sunshine & Shadows

Sunshine & Shadow is an autobiographical story in twenty chapters. These chapters may for example include a fireworks factory, a funeral, a shooting, a broken camera, or a found note. Each chapter begins with a short text . These texts are reminiscent of those that one can find in the old adventure novels (whose purpose was to describe what kind of grand events that will happen to the heroes of the adventure, in the next chapter). In the adventures of Sunshine & Shadow, the chapter that follows is told through photographs. The words in the texts visualizes scenes and stories, before you see them, that creates a play with associations between the images and the texts. The texts builds up expectations of what is to expect, which, when not met, confuses, and forces the viewer to fill in the gaps, be a detective, and build stories and connections of her own. Sunshine & Shadow challenges and plays with the idea of reality, chronology and historiography, by creating a loosened narrative where events and thoughts from a period of the artist’s life (translated into photographs and texts) falters freely between different times, between the actual world, inner visions, everyday life, fairy tale, construction, sunshine and shadow.