KATA OLSTROM
kata
Rooted in Oslo, Norway, 29 years of age and already a prize-winning photographer. Kata (Katarina) Olstrom has built an impressive reputation. Her deviating landscapes are due to that. It is not beauty she is looking for. It is the reflective impact on the viewer. Her images force the spectator to feel instead of think.
Her photographic work consists of two collections in an ongoing state of development: Motionless and Expected. From a different angle both collections question our autonomy. Are we the directors of our lives? Or is it all just a wonderful coincidence?
What is there to be learned…. Make the most of your life; it’s a one-time only experience ! Do not hold on to the limitations; resist them… dance till you drop, dance the dark away !
MOTIONLESS
The Motionless collection only has one subject: trees. Kata is preoccupied with the thought these almost largest living creatures are incapable of moving themselves. They are born and they will die in the same place, unable to give any direction to their situation or locality. They have acquired various coping mechanisms to handle whatever happens to them.
Yet they are far from pitiful. Kata shows us portraits of single trees, of trees trying to relate to each other or to their surroundings. Proud, powerful, fragile, vulnerable.
Expected
In the Expected collection Kata depicts sets, stages, decors. Everything is there, except the actors. The stages will be hosting things to happen. At least, if they will happen, which is never certain.
This uncertainty, with a sense of never-made or postponed choices, of missed opportunities, of expectations that are not met, reflects our lives. Always between hope and despair. Not knowing what will happen next and not knowing what to do…
