HULDRA (LEAVING THE DOOR AJAR)
HDvideo 11min52sec, 2025

Michail Michailov/Jasper Siverts

Link to the video: 

https://vimeo.com/1090851958
Password: MichailJasper


"Huldra (Leaving the Door Ajar)" takes its title from the Norwegian mythological figure of the same name. Huldra, originally meaning "the hidden one," appears in folkloric tales across the country - always sly, visible for barely a second their near - human form betrayed only by the telltale presence of a cow’s or fox’s tail. Often depicted naked in the woods, they seduce unsuspecting, lustful wanderers to bring them into her realm, the subterranean. This work seeks to encircle this subject: An exhibitionist who chooses to remain unseen. A ghostly presence inhabits a generic art space—perhaps a studio, a gallery, or a place of storage. The door remains slightly ajar; through its narrow aperture, a blade of light offers the camera the barest chance to register motion. Something—someone—passes, but remains unresolved.Their gestures resist interpretation: is this a struggle or an embrace? An invitation, or a warning? Have they infiltrated the institution—a museum, a gallery—or were they always part of its architecture, merely unacknowledged? These are no ordinary trespassers, but interlopers of attention: figures who haunt the peripheries of visibility, who crave the gaze even as they recoil from its fixity and capture.They do not steal objects, but moments. They do not want to own, but to be momentarily known—and then forgotten.Will they ever leave? Or is their exile precisely the point?