#Catalog of Shadows I

Kristel van Issum defines the often depicted mother Mary as enlightened in terms of darkness, reducing her to earthly proportions. Associations around sorrow and great suffering, the centuries-long curbing of feminine energy and, above all, the mother's loneliness, inspired her to create a series of seven film portraits on canvas.

Together with cinematographer Martin Kers, Van Issum takes us on a meticulous observation. In #Catalogue of Shadows I they deploy film as a photographic medium and make life-size photographs come to life. Music and ambient sound created by composer Han Stubbe (known from the Flemish band DAAU) form chords in them and fade again as foam, mist or vapour. Sometimes a motherly cry pops up - a wail, broken on the rocks.

Swedish actress and dancer Ulrika Kinn Svensson expresses the different characters, with movement in the minimal. She is one woman, seven archetypes. Each with her own motivation and motives. She is love, but equally anger, distrust, fear, contempt, pride, resistance and powerlessness. Masquerade and dismantling. She is it all.

Seven times a portrait of the female shadow side. Seven voices, one chord. About old wounds and traumas that have never been processed. About emotions and thoughts we'd rather not share. About defence mechanisms and strategies of detachment and denial. And about the fallacies that that denial brings about in everyday life.