Meet the Danish Boy Who Will Never Leave Home

Inspired by the iconic Little Mermaid who sits forever attached to her wet stone perch, Julian Juhlin vowed never to leave his childhood room.

I met Julian at his apartment in Vesterbro, Copenhagen, just a few minutes bike ride away from his childhood bedroom in Frederiksberg. Before I’m allowed to see his bedroom, he tucks away and emerges with what looks like a suit that Walter White would wear in an industrial-sized meth lab, bright green from head to toe. Once I’ve donned the outfit, I’m allowed into the room, and at first sight it’s eery yet incredible. Everything in the entire room including myself is this bright green, apart from Julian. Sitting on his bed, he points out the camera and open laptop screen across from us, where everything is black except for Julian who floats amongst the darkness like a poltergeist. The life size image is being transmitted to the walls of his empty childhood room in Frederiksberg, as it has been for the past 2 and a half years since he moved out.

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“I guess it’s an ‘art thing,’ but it’s also my life… I live this every day, every moment I’m in this bedroom. I’ve even slept with the lights on the whole time in order to keep the boy in the room alive. It started because I got this idea in my head to create this strange, beautiful story about a sort of Little Mermaid type character who can never leave home. Then I thought, oh my god, I’m going to have to actually live this out.”

Almost 3 years ago, at age 25, Julian already considered himself “The Boy Who Will Never Leave Home,” simply because, well, he hadn’t ever considered leaving. The idea spawned from that title, and when he finally went on the hunt for a room to move into, it was only because he had to leave the original space in order for the character to come to life. Whenever Julian is in his apartment’s bedroom in Vesterbro, his image is projected onto the walls of his childhood home, which is now void of furniture and decoration besides Julian’s ghostly image.

Julian, though now 28, is in every way a “boy” as he describes himself. His hair is the kind of untouched blonde usually reserved for Nordic preschoolers. He wears a captain’s hat and short white shorts, grinning from ear to ear throughout our meeting. His face is completely smooth, seemingly void of the stress of daily life, though he studies and works, managing a perfectly normal social life despite his unique circumstances. I imagine that not much social time is spent in his bedroom, as everyone who enters must wear the suit, which is now causing me to sweat profusely in areas I didn’t know you could.

If his mom had ever seen anything she wasn’t supposed to, Julian says she’s too polite to ever say.

“My mom loves the idea and is very supportive, but she does tell me that she feels like a bit of a creep sometimes, watching me but knowing that I’m unaware of her presence.”

To mark the first year of his “moving out,” Julian created an audio tour through his mother’s house where people could get an idea of the story and see The Boy Who Will Never Leave Home. The tour tells the story of small, mundane objects around the house, painting the picture of a completely normal life. In the kitchen, the top cupboard stays open, and on the audio track you hear that it’s been open since the boy moved away, because the mom can’t reach it. It could be anyone’s mother, anyone’s apartment, anyone’s life. It tells perhaps the sad story of an only child leaving home, a home where he once spent every moment with his mother. It’s something we can all relate to, as we grow up and life changes, where mom becomes just a phone call on her birthday and a Sunday brunch once in a while. So far, there has only been one tour of the apartment, over a year ago.

“The boy has become a sort of third person now. There’s me, my mom, and the boy. I can’t turn the lights off, I can’t let him die. My mom said she might want to rent the room or turn it into an office or something and I told her that’s fine, but the boy is staying. That also means that any room I move into will have to be turned into a green room.”

Finding a room to rent that would allow, or even begin to understand, Julian’s need to paint everything green and film himself 24/7, was not an easy task. As construction workers drill noisily outside the green room, Julian explains that his current landlord is kicking him out and he’ll need to find a new room in a few weeks, but the prospects are quite grim.

We caught up with Julian this week to hear how his situation turned out, and we are happy to report that he was able to find a temporary green room to move into until he moves to a more permanent location in the fall. While Julian frantically searches for new apartments and sets up new green rooms to the assured disgruntlement of landlords, his childhood home remains happily haunted by the unchanging image of the Boy Who Will Never Leave Home.

You can take a tour of Julian’s childhood home, boy included, in August as part of Metropolis Festival. Check out a small video about Julian here (in Danish).

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