SALIVA

Saliva I, from the series Nocturnal Pieces / 2021-22 / pigment prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta, mounted on aluminium dibond, stained walnut frame 136.6cm x 142.6cm (framed size)

After a night of intense dreaming, Stenram would wake up and spit onto the glass of her flatbed scanner, producing the Saliva works. They are futile attempts to capture the “content”, or at least aftermath, of nighttime dream events; but they also suggest underwater landscapes, stars and galaxies, transforming the intimate and internal into something more expansive and universal. In addition, they set themselves in dialogue with a mediaeval-to-Renaissance tradition whereby emotions or ‘humours’, far from being considered abstract or aetherial experiences, were understood in terms of visceral materiality.

“For night - through a major difference from day - is no more external than it is internal. Day is wholly outside; day is before our eyes, at the tip of our hands and feet on our tongue and in the porches of our ears. Night identifies outside with inside; the eyes sees in it the underside of things, the back of the eyelids, the invisible layer of the other side of things, the underpinnings, crypts, skins turned inside out. It is the world of substance, that which exists underneath and itself exists on nothing else....” Jean-Luc Nancy, from The Fall of Sleep

For the series Nocturnal Pieces, Stenram investigated sleeping and dreaming. Made while staying mostly indoors during the winter, the series is an exploration of the process of falling asleep; the transformation of active bodies into unconscious shapes surrounded by darkness and night.

Nocturnal Pieces was first exhibited in the exhibition Cadastral at Fotografisk Center, Copenhagen (DK) and was made possible through an artist's grant from Stiftung Kunstfond / Neustart Kultur.

Saliva II, from the series Nocturnal Pieces / 2021-22 / pigment prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta, mounted on aluminium dibond, stained walnut frame / 31.8cm x 39.3cm (framed size)

Saliva III, from the series Nocturnal Pieces / 2021-22 / pigment Prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta, mounted on aluminium dibond, stained walnut frame / 50cm x 62.5cm (framed size)

Saliva IV, from the series Nocturnal Pieces / 2021-22 / pigment prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta, mounted on aluminium dibond, stained walnut frame / 43.8cm x 35cm

Saliva V, from the series Nocturnal Pieces / 2021-22 / pigment prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta, mounted on aluminium dibond, stained walnut frame / 57.5cm x 60

‘“I am”, however, heard murmured by the unconsciousness of the dreamer, testifies less to an “I” strictly conceived than to a “self” simply withdrawn into self, out of reach of any questioning and of any representation. Murmured by unconsciousness, “I am” becomes unintelligible; it is a kind of grunt or sigh that escapes from barely parted lips. It is a preverbal stream that deposits on the pillow a barely visible trace, as if a little saliva had leaked out of that sleeping mouth.”’ Jean-Luc Nancy, from The Fall of Sleep