Once while sleepwalking, I almost jumped out of a building. I was then guided back to reality, without any recollection of the attempted leap. As a photographer, my work is characterized by a sleepy haze, disoriented with a hand placed on the window lock and a foot on the ledge.
I use photography to explore themes of memory and relationships in a dreamy and idyllic way with undertones of sleep phenomena. I confuse the senses with distorted visuals and experiences of space, pondering how we experience and define reality and what it means to be codependent on the things and people that deliver us comfort.
The choice of photography as a medium corresponds with the conventional association of memory with photographs. This ideology finds presence in my initial fascination with photography, stemming from the pit in my stomach I’ve had since I was a child: a lifelong fear of forgetting, compelling myself to photograph excessively. With this, I critique photography in its reputation of representing an undeniable truth.
There is a realm of derealization that exists between being awake and asleep; experiencing and remembering; remembering and forgetting. In between these binaries is where my work rests.
Bianca Olson (b. 2003 Roselle, IL) is an artist and BFA candidate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her photography practice has been a lifelong pursuit, followed by formal and academic training in her BFA. Bianca’s work spans across both digital and analog photographic mediums, including 35mm and medium format. Using these mediums, her fine art photographs encapsulate personal themes that explore memory and relationships through photographic theory and sleep phenomena. Her work has been featured in the solo exhibition “can you sleep at night?” at the University of Illinois, as well as in group shows such as the university’s BFA exhibition with an installation titled “minnesblick.”