Working with the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty, I was interested in exploring and uncovering its subtext. Questions arise in the process: What is the essence of this fairy tale? And above all: How do we want to deal with its actual message? How do we want to approach fairy tales further today (or again?)? How do we want to deal with the image and role of women who entered a process of emancipation centuries ago? Marie-Louise Franz writes about this in The Feminine in Fairy Tales: "It is possible that the bitterness of feeling neglected and underestimated, as experienced by many thousands of women, triggered the collective outburst of the women's movement at the beginning of this century. Today, however, it is obvious that women are often very uncertain about what it actually means to be a woman. It therefore seems very useful to me to ask about the psychic archetypes that are represented in many of our fairy tales." 

I focus on the metaphors and symbols of the fairy tale, with the help of which the state and inner maturing process of the girl Sleeping Beauty can be decoded. Many psychoanalysts have interpreted the 100 year sleep as an escapist fantasy of puberty and sexual awakening. I take up some of the symbols and play with them, such as the spindle, which is associated with the movement of time and with fate, or the small sleeping chamber, which, according to the US child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, stands for the female genitals. My piece is composed in such a way that each of the seven scenes can be associated with a particular symbol of the fairy tale.  Nevertheless, I remain abstract, visual, atmospheric, intuitive, archaic in my creation - to open the space for associations.

Liliana Barros

© photo: Sylwester Pawliczeek