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“Life is what happens and we just don’t know what’s coming.”

Name

Johanna von Oldershausen

Profession 

Artist

Website

carlajohanna.com

What do you find most fascinating about the creative process?

I find it fascinating that the ideas come while I am working, you just have to start, and a studio is a safe place where I can be myself and experiment. If I knew what kind of work would come out in the end, it would be boring. My studio is like a cabinet of curiosities, I don’t throw anything away, but figures and elements appear again and again in a different way. All the snippets have become part of myself.

A few words about your favorite creation?

Hard to choose, but I would say: the collages I created for a choir performance of Cantamus Berlin end of last year. The interplay of music, dance, and my works on the ceiling of the church was just magical.

What surprised you most about your first art shows?

To hear what other people see in my works and to realize that each work can evoke memories and stories in the viewer.

Someone else’s work that inspired or inspires you…

Nancy Spero, Claude Cahun, Hannah Höch, Francesca Woodman, Meret Oppenheim

Who would you like to work with someday and why?

I would love to create a stage design for an opera one day as the dramatic and magical “Gesamtkunstwerk” and the interplay of art, music, and poetry has always fascinated me.

Where are you from?

Born in the “Ruhrgebiet”, after living abroad for a long time, now based in Berlin.

Your style in 3 words?

Modern-surreal, bittersweet, narrative

Your weakness? Your strength?

I am often too self-critical, but this can perhaps also be a strength in order to develop further and try out new things.

Do you choose your art form or does the form choose you?

Collage as a symbol of our existence, this fragmentary nature, the simultaneous existence of rupture and beauty has always fascinated me.

What makes you different?

Many of my Collage elements are very personal and the personal change over time finds entry to my works.

When did you decide to become an artist? Do you choose your art form, or does the form choose you?

I have been painting and drawing as a child, studied at 3 different art colleges, and always worked creatively, but it took me 34 years to dare to call myself an artist.

“I think a lot about the phenomenon of time and especially about the transience and fragility of our bodies.”

Finish the sentence „More important than my career is…“

My family.

2025: Where are we going?

What is life all about? Fortunately, we cannot look into the future, but have to accept that everything is in flux and nothing is final.

Do you think about time as an artist?

Yes, I think a lot about the phenomenon of time, especially in relation to my collages. I think of time as if it had a form, something visible, like a series of transparent layers / fragments, one on top of the other. You don't look back along time, but down through it, like through water.

When the going gets tough…

I visit a museum because I love the silent almost sacred atmosphere. It calms me down and I always find new inspiration.

Put on your future vision glasses: What direction is our generation moving in, and what will our world look like in 50 years?

I think we are all even more connected to everything and with everybody, our lives will spin even faster, and I wonder how we will manage to pause for a moment.

What does freedom mean when it comes to art?

A studio of my own and the freedom to find my own language.

If the universe is everything and it’s expanding, what is it expanding into?

It's quite overwhelming to imagine what's flying, exploding, collapsing, and burning in the vastness above our heads... Looking up at the sky is always a glance into the past.