Matevž Čebašek

My family faced dementia for the first time in the 1980s, when my grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. My grandmother cared for him until he passed away in 2008. She witnessed all the steps of his disease. I can't imagine how frightening and frustrating it must have been, when she found out about her dementia. 

In the mountains, the sun is shining is an exploration of the fragility and unreliability of memories within the framework of dementia and the post-communist environment. It is a collaborative project with my grandmother living in her ancestral home in Slovenia and aims to create an image of personhood beyond her limitations. It is based on reflections on memory and landscape while exploring their significance in the context of past, present, and future. 

With the installation, I’m bringing together different perspectives on the past by layering official historical records, familial recollections, and my personal interpretations. I’m posing questions on the subjectivity of history, on how it is recorded and understood. I argue that history can turn out to be a product of imagination to the same extent as memories. Next to that, I draw parallels between the time disorientation of a person with dementia and the belief that the past is ever-present in the now. As Deleuze puts it: “The body is never in the present, it contains the before and the after, tiredness and waiting.” 

Through my photographic and cinematic encounters, I’m showing my interpretations of official and unofficial histories that are written and transmitted in my grandmother’s body and landscape. The installation invites the viewer to create their interpretations and connections between the images and texts from the past and present.