An uneasy dream of home
In the middle of the night, in the depths of sleep, our unconscious is playing pandemic dreams behind our eyes. We wake with a feeling of uncertainty, the vivid images seeping into our days.
Toronto artist Mikael Sandblom used his mind’s nocturnal output to create the work above, “The Way Back Home.”
It’s based, he says, “on a recent dream where I am in town, but I can’t find my way home. Buildings have disappeared and been replaced. I turn a familiar corner, but it leads to streets I’ve never seen before. I have a map, but I can’t find my place in it. It’s a dream about trying to find my way back to the way things were.”
The medium he uses is as important as the message. His new work, he says, combines photography and digital illustration.
“The pieces are printed on photo paper and laminated between an aluminum dibond backing and one-eighth-inch acrylic. The images are based on my photos of clouds and waves. Outlines, tracings, maps and diagrams are layered over the photos in a way analogous to how we interpret, map and analyze our environment. Throughout the surface, fragments of images float into focus and then recede as the eye moves on to other elements.
“The work reflects a world where nothing is solid or permanent. It’s our act of perception that brings elements into being and dissolves them again. What we see in the world is not what is ‘objectively’ out there; most of it is a projection of ideas that we’ve formed or learned.”
This piece is part of an exhibition titled “Coming Home” now online at Gallery 1313, curated by gallery director Phil Anderson, assisted by Mariah Lamont-Lennox. Home took on new meaning during COVID-19.
“In mid-March, after COVID-19 started to seem like something very real, the Canadian government announced that Canadians should come home. Front-line workers lived in fear that returning home could mean spreading this virus. As people were advised to stay home and only go out for groceries, home became even more important.” Now, Anderson says, “we are anxious to return to some kind of normal life and present some hope for the future.”
And so we dream of home, shifting and changing shape to become a place to hold our hopes and fears, all that we are and all that we’ve become.
You can see more of the exhibition online at g1313.org.