DOMOBAAL

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La Villa del Priorato di Malta

'Freud Dreams of Rome' (2007) is a series of eleven photographic etchings (edition 3, of which 1 set is framed and 2 are presented as Portfolios made by Bookworks Studio). The etchings were exhibited 2007/08 at the Freud Museum, London. When Sigmund Freud arrived in Rome for the first time in 1901 he had already been dreaming of the city for many years. In 'The Interpretation of Dreams', Freud writes: 'A dream is a fulfilment of a wish'. Four dreams expressed his still unfulfilled longing for Rome. In each of them, his dream view of the city is curiously distorted his 'Rome' is set in Alpine scenery or full of German posters. Freud did not take photographs while on holiday, though he did buy engravings. Sharon Kivland's etchings show us a Rome we have never seen before. Or one we have never consciously recognised. The views are taken from guidebooks to Rome, contemporary with Freud's seven visits. These are views of a city any tourist might see – but she has captured them empty of human activity, as if they were night scenes in broad daylight. They are oddly cropped. Uninhabited, they reveal only impasses, dark courtyards, angles of buildings. These empty arches and cryptic doorways indicate a concealed life. Freud's dream Rome was an unreal city, made up of his fears, wishes, scraps of memory from the previous day. Sharon Kivland's Rome is the real city, but this place is an expression of the hidden activities of the mind.