KARI KOLA

Light of my Life

“Nothing is impossible; it is just a matter of deciding how much you want to use your energy towards achieving it.”

Kari Kola

I’ve been interested in light for as long as I can remember. Light is everywhere and it affects the world and our daily lives in many ways. I’m from Finland and here the autumns and the winters last long and these seasons are very dark. I wanted to teach myself to use light to be able to utilize the darkness that surrounds me during those seasons. That’s why I became who I am. A Light Artist.

I have worked with light for over 20 years and I have worked in over 2,000 projects in a leading role. I started with theatre, dance and performing arts as a light designer, then i did exhibitions and worked over 250-projects with different symphonic orchestras. After these i did lots of events, operas and special projects. It started to be more and more intriguing to work outside on extreme conditions and use light in central role of the project, to create light-art.

I have worked with many historical castles and very unique and really vulnerable sites. I have created light installations for several special sites like UNESCO HQ in Paris and Stonehenge in United Kingdom, where nobody else didn’t get access to work with light-art. I’ve executed very complex productions in large scale on nature reserve areas and multiple historical sites with temperatures variating from -45-degrees to +45 degrees of Celsius.

I have worked also as a Technical and an Artistic Leader in several productions including festivals, operas, musicals, multi-art performances and opening ceremonies. These projects have been executed on both, a national and international level.

Light is a really powerful tool and I believe that we can draw focus to any site, city, or value using light art. I plan to work on an unseen scale with unique sites and push the limits of light art into new dimensions. This will create a new level of impact in raising awareness on many topics.