Ina Otzko is a Norwegian artist who travels the world to explore the differences between cultures, and to observe the manifold practices and beliefs of human nature. In her art, she expresses both an intuitive and rational curiosity, in which her search for reasoned belief challenges her integrity to feel. The resulting tensions that emerge are exemplified by her ongoing series of photographs, INTERIORS. Her focus is to expose facets resulting from the conflictual urges of Belonging and Longing that are within each of us. This struggle is an inevitable jolt of life, since the human soul seems to require a comfort of Belonging, which runs contrary to its Longing to surpass itself, to go beyond its existing experiences.

The interiors that Otzko photographs are the private homes of people she has met whilst travelling. Yet the larger story is denied the viewer - there are no clues as to the relationships or the narratives surrounding each carefully composed domestic interior. As both photographer and model, she is always simultaneously the subject and object of her work. A subtle sense of absence seems to withdraw her from the visual probe of the camera. However familiar these interiors appear, the artist’s body is given a specific function and both takes and creates room. The notion of the intimate and private space of the indoors is played out by her presence. Otzko’s posed body gives the viewer a key into a free movement inside each private room. The viewer’s own experiences and history may then infuse these works with new information whereby communication can happen between the work and the viewer. We compare, therefore we are. But each site involves a primary personal involvement, whereby the wanderer must create her own security, her own safety, by attempting to organize any strands of chaos. These photographed interiors can be seen as moments of order, moments of self consolidation, which are thereafter classified purely by a house number and a date. In 1971 Martin Heidegger famously stated that “all distances in time and space are shrinking”. Indeed the contemporary pace of life and its information flow seems to confine us into smaller segments of time. There is hardly any time to breathe deeply, let alone meditate. Ina Otzko’s works highlight the subjectivity of the perception of time. She uses her poise and body to challenge and provoke our ideas of private space.