In her multimedia practice Olga Lamm lets ideas direct form, working primarily in photography and installation, as well as with text and language. Drag queens, cemeteries, entry ways, dolls, mannequins, imaginary landscapes, and metaphysical word-plays are motifs employed for their metaphorical import, representing my interest in themes of identity and transformation.
Our environment consists of many organic and man-made elements that play a pivotal role in our perception. As these elements become equally present and important in our daily lives, we evolve
and adapt to both. Lamm's work considers how we do that, exploring the reciprocal relationship between interior and exterior realities, macro and micro worldviews, and the spaces where nature and technology connect.
For example, by inserting Wigstock participants into brightly saturated, bucolic landscapes
Journey (2001), she emphasizes the artifice of persona utilizing digital collage. And in subjecting photographs of animals in their natural habitat to a thermal imaging effect in Visual Awareness (2006) while embedding them with audio waveforms, she examines the impact of current and future technology
on nature.
Elements of light, color, sound, rhythm, and scale are similarly engaged in more minimal text-based works that consider how perception shapes experience as well as meaning. The icon of a woman in i(self-portrait) (2002), is comprised of a particular strain of numbers that are an encrypted code which seeks to convey the fundamental unity of all elements in the work and life itself. It is part of the “i” series (2002-2003). Similarly, the word “BELIEF,” in her series Wordplay (2012-2019), broken down anagrammatically and transformed into
“BE LIFE” suggests a sense of individuality within unity.