SURRENDER
Solo Exhibition, Galleri Nord-Norge, Harstad, 2023
Photo: Steve Nilsen / GNN
SURRENDER brought together photography, video, sound, and neon in an immersive installation centred on surrender as a condition of attention: a relinquishing of control that allows other relationships between body, time, memory, and environment to emerge.
At the centre of the exhibition, Mnemosyne (2023) approached landscape as an archive of personal and collective memory. The video work Surrender extended this temporal field through moving water, fractured light, and immersive sound, placing the body within processes of continuous environmental transformation.
Neon works including Take your time (2015), (Be)longing (2014), and Slowly becoming light (2022) interrupted the space with propositions of duration, belonging, and transformation, while the Polaroid series How is your heart? brought the exhibition back to the intimacy and vulnerability of the body.
Link to video Surrender
SLOWLY BECOMING LIGHT
Slowly becoming light (2022) holds transformation within the phrase itself: not light as a fixed state, but as something gradually entered or becoming. Rendered in neon, language becomes illumination, marking a threshold between visibility and disappearance, material presence and immaterial light.
First presented as part of the main exhibition at Festspillene Helgeland, Jacobsenbrygga, Helgeland Museum, Norway, 2022. Also presented in TRE: Flow | Movement | Rhythm, ArtBase Helgeland (2022), SURRENDER, Galleri Nord-Norge (2023), and Shadows and Beacons (2023–2025).
FALLING FOR RELIGION
The red neon pulses between desire and danger, vitality and warning. The endless circle evokes how belief, ideologies and structures of power repeat and renew themselves, while the title FALLING FOR RELIGION opens a tension between devotion and collapse—asking what happens when conviction becomes power.
Red neon, letter formed glass tubes, transformers
300 cm diameter
Unique work.
Commissioned for solo exhibition at Galleri Backer, Vestfold University, 2011
Exhibited at The North Norwegian Art Centre, 2012 and Temautstillingen 2026 at Kristiansund Kunsthall.
Photo: Kjell Ove Storvik
LEVIATHAN
78 unique Polaroid photographs
LEVIATHAN (2015) was conceived specifically for the solo exhibition SONO QUI, PUOI SENTIRLO?, curated by Maria Savarese at Castel dell’Ovo, Naples, in 2015. The exhibition was later presented at Bodø Art Society, Norway, in 2018.
The work consists of 78 unique Polaroid photographs produced inside the crater of the Solfatara volcano in the Campi Flegrei, just outside Naples. Working within the volcanic site, Otzko approached the landscape not simply as a subject, but as an active participant in the photographic process. Heat, steam, mineral residue and atmospheric conditions interacted with the unstable chemistry of the Polaroid film, affecting the images as they emerged and continuing to alter them over time. The photographs remain materially unresolved — suspended between appearance and disappearance, control and transformation.
The title is drawn from George Oppen’s poem Leviathan, in which questions of truth, language, fear and human relation unfold against the material presence of the world. This tension resonates throughout the work: between what can be seen and what resists visibility, between human attempts at control and forces that exceed them. Geological and human timescales converge as the volatility of the volcanic landscape meets the instability of the photographic image.
Rather than fixing a moment in time, the photographs become records of an ongoing encounter between material, environment and perception — images that continue to register change beyond the artist’s control.
LEVIATHAN was presented in dialogue with TRUST / Tetrahedron (2015), a white neon sculpture inspired by scientific reflectors encountered at the volcanic site, and TAKE YOUR TIME (2015), a neon work exploring the ambiguity of waiting, duration and agency. Together, the works connect geological time, scientific observation and embodied experience, questioning the limits of human control over processes that continue to unfold beyond us.
Title reference: George Oppen, “Leviathan,” in New Collected Poems.
TRUST / Tetrahedron
White neon sculpture 150 × 150 × 150 cm
TRUST / Tetrahedron (2015) takes its form from scientific reflectors encountered at the Solfatara volcanic crater near Naples, within the Campi Flegrei. Used as reference points for monitoring ground movement, these instruments register subtle changes in a landscape shaped by volcanic and seismic activity. They reveal the instability of what appears solid and permanent.
Constructed from six illuminated edges, the tetrahedron forms a structure whose integrity depends upon the relationships between its parts. Each element must support and be supported by the others. Trust becomes a physical and relational condition.
The work considers trust across scales, beginning with trust in oneself and extending through intimate relationships to communities, institutions and geopolitical systems. No single element can secure the whole independently. A disturbance at one point reverberates throughout the structure, exposing the interdependence of seemingly separate parts.
Associated in alchemical symbolism with fire, the tetrahedron carries the potential for volatility and transformation. White neon gives the structure an appearance of precision and stability, while its material fragility suggests the precarious nature of what holds us together.
The sculpture extends questions of mutual dependence, measurement and control into our relationship with forces beyond human command.
What holds us together when the ground beneath us shifts?
TAKE YOUR TIME
Neon installation, artist's handwriting
TAKE YOUR TIME presents a familiar phrase as an ambiguous imperative. Read as an invitation, it suggests patience, waiting and the possibility of allowing events to unfold without intervention. Read with emphasis on YOUR, it becomes a demand to claim one's own time — or raises the more unsettling possibility that time can be taken from us.
Rendered in the artist's own handwriting, the phrase carries the trace of a personal gesture, introducing intimacy and vulnerability into what might otherwise appear to be a universal instruction.
The work moves between generosity and command, patience and urgency, autonomy and surrender. What appears to be a simple reassurance becomes a question of agency: who determines how time is spent, who is expected to wait, and who has the power to decide when waiting ends?
The neon transforms language into a physical presence, holding open the tension between time as something we experience, something we are given, and something we attempt to possess or control.
Whose time is it?
Interiors 72/12
Interiors 72/12 is the first in a series of self-timed photographs and performance-for-camera works, developed primarily between 2012 and 2013 through temporary stays in private homes. Placing her own body within unfamiliar domestic architectures, Otzko explores the threshold between intimacy and exposure, belonging and displacement, inner and outer space.
Working simultaneously as photographer and subject, the body becomes a sensing and spatial instrument – measuring, inhabiting, and subtly recalibrating each environment. The domestic interior, conventionally associated with privacy, security, and ownership, becomes provisional: a site of negotiation between body and architecture, familiarity and foreignness.
The series established questions that continue to resonate throughout Otzko’s practice: how physical presence shapes our relationship to place, how belonging is constructed and unsettled, and how sustained attention can transform the experience of space.
First presented as Interiører / Interiors 72/12 at the Nordic Contemporary Poetry Festival Exhibition, Hamar Art Society, Norway (2013), in collaboration with poet Hanne Bramness. Later exhibited in Sono Qui, Puoi Sentirlo at Castel dell’Ovo, Naples; Bodø Art Society; Vadsø Art Society; Arkhangelsk International Photo Festival; St. Petersburg Museum of Nonconformist Art; It Was Meant for All Things to Meet at Galleri Nord-Norge; and Galleri Syn.
IT WAS MEANT FOR ALL THINGS TO MEET
Galleri Nord-Norge, Harstad, 2022
Artists: Ina Otzko, Anne Lingaard Møller, Eva Fachè, and Jet Pascua
Curated by Ina Otzko & Jet Pascua
Inspired by Richard Blanco’s poem Complaint from El Río Grande, the exhibition considered what it means to exist in relation—to one another, to the landscapes we inhabit, and to forces that extend beyond the individual. Through photography, video, sound, and installation, the artists approached attention and poetry as ways of confronting ecological and social uncertainty, asking what forms of responsibility emerge when seemingly separate lives, histories, and environments are understood as interconnected.
Ina Otzko presented works from the series Interiors 72/12, Get into the heart of the matter, A handful, and the video work Make me tender again.
GET INTO THE HEART OF THE MATTER
Presented in the solo exhibition Slowly becoming light, the group exhibition It was meant for all things to meet, and at Juxtapositions Art Fair.
Featured in KATALOG 35.2, 2024.
Developed during the Covid-19 lockdown in Italy (2020–2021), GET INTO THE HEART OF THE MATTER turns inward at a moment when the external world had contracted. Through a sequence of intimate photographs, the work approaches attention as an active state: a way of staying with uncertainty, vulnerability, and the passage of time rather than escaping them.
The title becomes both instruction and proposition—to move beyond the surface, remain with what is present, and enter more deeply into the conditions of being.
Quiet yourself / Open eyes / Open ears / Open mind / Open heart / Dive in / Immerse yourself / Play / Listen / Absorb / Reflect / Get to the heart of the matter
— Brian Pertl, Deep Listener
15 images
20 × 20 cm
Mounted on aluminium with acrylic front
A Handful
Photography series (2021)
A Handful explores the relationship between personal conviction, truth and responsibility. In each photograph, a hand holds a small object bearing a statement: Truth? and I Live Without Regrets.
The intimate gesture of holding becomes a question of possession, certainty and control. What do we hold on to, what do we claim to know, and how much are we willing or able to carry?
Between the questioning of truth and the declaration of a life without regrets, the series opens onto the political dimensions of individual belief, accountability and the narratives through which we justify our actions.
Works
A Handful / Truth? (2021)
Pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag UltraSmooth 308 gsm
60 × 80 cm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP | Last available: 3/3
A Handful / I Live Without Regrets (2021)
Pigment print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag UltraSmooth 308 gsm
60 × 80 cm
Edition of 3 + 1 AP | Last available: 3/3
Selected exhibitions
2022 TRE – Flyt | Bevegelse | Rytme, Sommersethgården, Sandnessjøen, ArtBase Helgeland 66°N, Norway
2022 Slowly Becoming Light, Festspillene Helgeland / Helgeland Museum, Vefsn, Norway
2022 It Was Meant for All Things to Meet, Galleri Nord-Norge, Harstad, Norway
2021 Supermarket – Stockholm Independent Art Fair, Stockholm, Sweden
2021 Equinox, Nordnorske Bildende Kunstnere 50th Anniversary, Bodø Kunstforening, Norway
Collection
Harstad Municipality, Norway (2022) — both works acquired for the municipal art collection.
TREASURES IN HEAVEN
Presented at Den 74 Nordnorske Kunstutstilling — Annual Juried Traveling Exhibition in Northern Norway (2020), and Shore Line, Arkhangelsk Regional Lore Museum, Arkhangelsk, Russia (2020).
Acquired by Meløy Health and Welfare Centre, Nordland County Municipality, 2021.
TREASURES IN HEAVEN (2018-2019) is a series of photographs of the Tyrrhenian Sea, where shifting light, surface, and atmosphere transform a seemingly boundless landscape into a register of environmental change. The sea appears at once enduring and vulnerable, holding the tension between what exceeds human time and what is increasingly altered by human action.
The title draws on Henry Miller’s reflections on humanity’s responsibility toward the Earth, and on the possibility that awareness may emerge through moments of crisis and uncertainty.
Series of seven photographs
Hahnemühle Photo Rag 305g
100 × 150 cm
Edition 3 + 1 AP
STAY A WHILE YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL
Presented in REFLEX
The North Norwegian Art Centre, Norway (2012)
Kulturens Hus, Luleå, Sweden (2013)
Sámi Center for Contemporary Art, Karasjok, Norway (2013)
Later exhibited in I Enter the Landscape from the North
Kulturbadet Galleri, Norway (2024)
Referencing Goethe’s Faust, STAY A WHILE YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL takes its title from the desire to suspend time at the moment of beauty. Twisted neon tubes rest on a 100 × 100 cm concrete platform, 10 cm thick, while directly above, an equally sized concrete slab, 60 cm thick, hangs from chains and a pulley. The fragile, luminous lines of neon are caught between two geometric masses, creating an uneasy equilibrium between light and weight, beauty and threat, stillness and potential collapse—the desire to hold a moment against the inevitability of its passing.
Presented in REFLEX alongside selections from Interiors 72/12 and poems by Hanne Bramness.
Neon, concrete, pulley, transformers
100 cm × 100 cm x 100 cm
Mutatio – Pietà
Photography / installation
Mutatio – Pietà revisits the classical Pietà motif, depicting a woman holding the seemingly lifeless body of a man. Through this intimate encounter, the work explores vulnerability, compassion and the fragile boundaries between life and death, care and suffering.
Mutatio, Latin for change or transformation, suggests a shifting of established meanings and relationships. The familiar image of mourning becomes a space for questioning how we perceive and respond to the vulnerability of others.
Originally created as a photograph in 2007, the work was developed into a monumental installation for NordlandiART-18 at Stormen in Bodø in 2018, and subsequently presented in other locations. The photographic canvas is stretched and suspended by ropes, creating a physical tension that makes its surface resemble skin pulled taut. The material presence of the installation extends the vulnerability of the depicted bodies beyond the image itself.
How far are we willing to go for one another?
Rooted in a reflection on nonviolence and the sanctity of life, Mutatio – Pietà considers our responsibility towards one another and the possibility of coexistence beyond violence. Its questions extend beyond the human to the preservation of life in all its diversity.
Work details
Monumental installation (2018)
Photographic canvas, ropes
300 × 375 cm
Photographic edition (2007)
Pigment print on Hahnemühle FineArt Photo Rag Baryta 325 gsm
100 × 126 cm
Edition of 5 | 3 editions available
Selected exhibitions
2019 — Mathriaka – Mother Earth Reunion, Faro di Punta Lingua, Salina, Sicily
2018 — Cosmoscow International Contemporary Art Fair, Moscow, Russia
2018 — NordlandiART-18, Stormen Gallery / Stormen Library, Bodø, Norway
2008 — Nordnorsken, NNBK Members' Exhibition, Festspillene i Nord-Norge, Harstad
2007 — MFA Fine Art Degree Exhibition, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
Selected press
Ellen Sæthre-McGuirk, “En kjærlighetshilsen til Bodø,” Bodø Nu, 5 December 2018.