Eleven institutions from eleven European countries cooperate as part of the European Photography Platform’s Futures project in order to discover emerging talents and to introduce them on an international level, especially to the European art market. As a platform partner, the Capa Center selected five young authors during Budapest Portfolio Review 2019 who joined Unseen Amsterdam this September. Get to know the Futures talents of Capa Center!
Olga Kocsi
Kocsi Olga (1987) attended Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design between 2008 and 2016, where she obtained Media Design BA, ~MA and Visual Culture and Design Teacher degrees. She’s currently also partaking in the university’s Media Arts doctorate program. In 2011 she won an Erasmus scholarship in Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. Between 2017-2019 got the Derkovits fineart scholarship. Most influential foundation of her works is the “Little House” where she grew up, and her personal stories lived inside it. In her installations which provides multisensorial experiences, she works with topics which lies in the cross section of various scientific fields, such as: the relation between reality and virtual reality and it’s potential evolution in the future; pushing and mapping the borders between private and public spheres; or time travelling. It’s incredibly important for her to actively involve the spectator via creating unorthodox situations for them. She works and lives in Budapest.
When and how did you first get acquainted with photography? When and how did it become important for you?
I was still quite green when I was already taking photographs, first only on film; this is how I got acquainted with the medium. Later I started working more consciously with a digital, compact camera. I bought my first reflex camera in 2006 – I learned photography on my own, mostly from myself, and books. Later I created animations and moving pictures. For a long time, I had wanted to be a photographer, but eventually, I found myself in other media, and in intermedial works of art. For me, photography is an important, necessary, but not sufficient tool, which I use for my projects.
How do you see your relationship with photography? How do you use this medium?
For me, the role of the medium varies from project to project. Sometimes I use it to document things, other times I work with the process itself. I use the apparatus as a time-absorbing tool, for creating impressions. I’m interested in the role of light and time in the process of creating analogous images and creating images without machines. I am also fascinated by the way the images materialize on the various materials.
Generally, which are the most important issues for you, and how do you reflect on these in your works?
I experiment with pictures and materials – I’m interested in how the photograph appears on spatial surfaces, on foil, leather, hair, textile, metal, glass, plexiglass or concrete, or on a railing. I’m inspired by the relations between the various materials and the images, and I see quite a bit of opportunity in this.
What do you think about the current state and the future of photography?
The future is female!
What are you working on, and what are your short-term plans?
At present, you can see my work at the Családi okok miatt (For Family Reasons) exhibition of MODEM in Debrecen, Hungary, for which I created a new piece upon the request of the curator, Tamás Don. We worked together for almost a year, which resulted in a larger installation, including glass surfaces for the most part. The installation is titled Rózsa mama (Mama Rose) – I asked for one corner where I would place an almost 3m-high carved parlor mirror in the center. When the visitors stand in front of the mirror, they can see an animation projected on them.
Selection from Olga Kocsi’s picture
