In your dreams

With her move to Marseille and the beginning of her residency at Les Ateliers Lautard, Sanaa Goldie began experiencing unusually vivid dreams. These nocturnal fragments sparked the ongoing body of work 'Dans tes rêves'.

The phrase “Dans tes rêves / In your dreams” carries multiple meanings. It can function as a sharp comeback to someone’s audacity—an immediate refusal to an unwanted comment or intrusion. At the same time, it points toward the inner world: the subconscious, a hidden landscape that reveals itself through the strange and abstract language of dreams.

Dreams often feel limitless. Dimensions shift, bodies transform, and realities overlap without restriction. Yet in our waking lives we constantly draw borders around ourselves. Social expectations, internalized fears, and invisible rules quietly shape what we believe is possible. Over time, these limitations begin to feel natural—keeping us slightly uncomfortable, yet just numb enough not to question them or push beyond the borders we have accepted.

This series places emphasis on that subtle discomfort. The paintings depict monumental, slightly distorted bodies navigating tight, restrictive spaces. Figures appear trapped in boxes just large enough for them to exist, yet too small to fully expand. Limbs bend, bodies adjust, and proportions shift as they negotiate the boundaries surrounding them.

Some of the larger works are created on paper, allowing the surface itself to bend and respond—suggesting that space and reality may be more fluid, yet also more fragile, than we assume.

Presented in a Späti during 48h Neukölln, these large works enter an environment not designed to contain them. The intimate, constrained space requires the paintings themselves to adapt—much like the figures they depict. In this way, the exhibition becomes a reflection on scale, restriction, and the constant negotiation between inside and outside.