DBE 11, from inside the exhibition
Seeing my nightmares on the vaulted walls of the fortress at RYMA, in a place where every soul seems free to confess its inner life in quiet secrecy, is something I will never forget. The exhibition came alive throughout the festival. Every time I walked through the room, the scenes in the drawings seemed to dance along with the music outside: the fragile voice of KWOON, the heavy, psychedelic atmosphere Wolvennest built, the melancholy of A Swarm of the Sun after sunset, the live debut of Genune, the contrabass doom of Abyssic, the ancestral ritual of Forndom, the unleashed drums of Hermopolis. Although I have always wanted to see Thy Catafalque live, I had the great pleasure of blessing my ears with Mansur, where Martina of Thy Catafalque also sings. I had already seen Nightfall live in Greece, and, as always, they never stopped surprising me.
We set everything up as best we could, in a short time, with a short symbolic explanation next to each work. The transport and installation would never have been possible so quickly without the unconditional help of my younger brother, Emanuel, whom I thank with all my heart.
When the time came to present the exhibition, I didn't think I could handle the emotion. I was more than pleasantly surprised by how many people came. At one point I felt the need to stop talking, but I kept going, seeing the enthusiasm and attention with which people listened to the story behind the nightmares. It moved me deeply to see that some wanted to take the works home. There were questions I never expected, and they encouraged me to build the story behind each drawing. It is very hard to part with something that is a part of you, and even harder to put a price on it, but people's curiosity and appreciation helped me enormously.
While Dødheimsgard played “Sonar Bliss”, I had a moment alone with my work. It felt as if we were talking to each other, marvelling together at passages of outrageous depth. The dark theatre of Dirty Granny Tales completed the exhibition's atmosphere perfectly, and Year of No Light, for the second time in my life, sent me to another universe.
I wasn't alone. In the vaulted room, the watercolours and poetry of Oana-Alexandra Sedonja @alexandra_sedonja in “Fluid Horizons” felt like a blessing and a calm for the soul, a path back to yourself, to sitting in silence and talking with who you are. Outside, on the brick wall, another fellow artist of ours @sattaen_ built “A World Full of Mysteries and Spells”: seraphim and cherubim with many wings, caught as if in a ceremony of their own, alongside drawings as symmetrical as mandalas, all fine white lines on black, set among birch branches, dried herbs and small lights, like a shrine in the forest. Three different worlds, under the same fortress.
DBE takes you completely out of the everyday, out of routine and the grey times through which we build our paths. We don't always manage to cut the strings of our burdens so we can breathe divine air. This time I didn't leave a message in the festival notebook, as I did in 2017. I believe we are never fully ready for a confession from the soul; what matters more is calming the storm inside, so we have the freedom to make one. The only thing that truly hurt was arriving after the opening ceremony, an absolutely divine moment, a tradition and a signature of DBE. I wished so much to be at the 12th edition, but I was overjoyed for those who were there, and I was present with my soul and with one eye on the posts that appeared online. I hope the universe smiles again, towards DBE 13.
