I am using photography to explore the complexity and sense of self. I am interested in the connection between inner and outer realities, often emphasizing internal realms, rather than external circumstances.
In each image I tell a story from a poetic and subjective perspective. I work experimentally often using myself as model – sometimes more than once in the same image. In this project I focus on being in liminal space. Liminal space understood as a state of unease where identity, dreams, affiliations and memories are transformed.
I have several times found myself in situations where my circumstances were undergoing serious changes. The death of a loved one, severe disease, divorce, moving from one country to another. Situations where I could not go back to my old life, and didn’t know how to proceed, I was in liminal space, trying to keep a delicate balance between despair and magic.
To express the mixed feelings when reality becomes somewhat unreal and life distressing, full of contemplation but sometimes also wonders and wild hopes, I let my composite images balance between realism and surrealism.
About Titika Røtkjær
Titika Røtkjær is an artist from Copenhagen, Denmark. She works with photography and text. After studies in communication at Roskilde University, Denmark, she moved to Norway to study visual art, first at Oslo National Academy of the Arts, later in Bergen where she finished her studies in visual art at Bergen Academy of Art and Design with a MA in Textile Art.
But she felt drawn to photography, and started to explore it when she got a two-years grant for young artists from the Danish State. She completely left the textile medium and created large colour images with an analog medium format camera. During this time she was experiencing extensive crises in her personal life, and eventually she became ill. After more than a decade of severe disease with no photography at all, she returned to camera based work. By then she felt changed, and therefore needed to change her photography as well. Entirely.
In 2018 she began to develop a new practice and visual expression – an ongoing process. She took up digital photography and now works solely in black / white, also new is the use of herself as model.
Titika Røtkjær has no formal education in photography. Her knowledge about photography and editing is achieved by continuous self-education.
