JOHAN SOLBERG
DEAR MARIUS
Dear Marius is a personal story where Johan Solberg explores the process of overcoming a childhood trauma. The making of the book served as a cathartic process to overcome the trauma. As a child, Solberg was subjected to mental abuse by his basketball trainer Marius at the age of twelve. The content of the book is a collection of notes that he started writing after he began to process the incident. The story is personal but speaks about child abuse in a broader sense and asks the reader to explore how it relates to their own context and environment. Along with the text there are illustrations in the form of abstracted shapes depicting rock formations that act as an element of mental safety. The shapes guide the reader through the mental landscape created by the
story, and create an inner landscape that responds to the text, following its intensity; and to depict the complexity of our emotions. The images are tracings of bodies of water and islets from the coast where Solberg grew up.
Dear Marius has been printed on Zerkall paper with hand-set Joanna and with illustrations made from woodcuts on birch plywood. The book has sixteen spreads and measures 4 x 6 inches, that have been hand-bound in an edition of 50 copies.