Olana Light is a multidisciplinary artist based in Portsmouth, UK, working across sculpture, performance and moving images. Her work explores the relationship between humans and the natural world, with a focus on transformation, belonging and interconnection. Her work explores the relationship between humans and the natural world, with a focus on transformation, belonging and interconnection. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally and has received numerous awards, including the Contemporary Art Society’s Emerging Sculptors Award (2023) and an Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice grant (2024). Her performances take art into public spaces, opening it up to new audiences and inviting reflection on our connection with nature.
On 10-13 September, she will participate in Hay Festival Segovia 2026 with Searching for a Place to Belong, a photographic exhibition that examines women’s relationship with nature, the environment and what it means to be part of it. Through a series of evocative self-portraits incorporating natural materials and textures, she blurs the boundary between body and landscape, inviting us to slow down and reconsider our place within the living world. The exhibition will be accompanied by The Birch Tree Family, a captivating outdoor performance in which she will become a living tree sculpture that walks through Segovia’s streets, rooted yet wandering.
We interviewed her to discover more about her practice, her connection to nature and her hopes for these projects in Segovia.
As a multidisciplinary artist, how would you describe what you do and the role that your choice of material or medium plays in your work?
I work across sculpture, performance, photography and film, but everything I make comes from my interest in our relationship with nature.
I create wearable sculptures that blur the boundaries between the human body and the natural world. Through these transformations, I invite people to imagine that we are not separate from nature, but part of it.
For me, each medium has its own role. Sculpture gives me the physical form, performance brings it to life, and photography and film allow the work to continue beyond the live event. I love how the sculptures change once they leave the gallery and enter public spaces. Suddenly, they become part of everyday life, and people respond in ways you could never predict.
One of the most important parts of my practice is performing in public. Many people don't visit galleries, so I like bringing art to them instead. I enjoy creating unexpected moments that make people stop, smile and think differently about nature and about themselves.
The concepts of belonging and identity have a strong presence across your work. How have your personal upbringing and your decision to study art in your late 30’s impacted your idea of these two concepts and the way you approach them in your work today?
When I was a child, I spent most of my free time outside. I loved exploring forests, fields and rivers, watching butterflies and making up adventures on my own. Nature was where I felt happiest and most comfortable. Some of my favourite memories are from spending summers in my grandmother's village, surrounded by nature.
I didn't realise how important those memories were until the COVID lockdowns. Suddenly, we were only allowed short walks outside, and I found myself thinking about nature as my happy place when I was a child. I realised how much those early experiences had shaped me and how deeply connected I felt to the natural world. That's when nature naturally became the focus of my work.
I started studying Fine Art when I was 31 and heavily pregnant. I was older than most of the students and trying to balance being a new mum with university. At different times in my life, I've often felt like I didn't quite fit in. As a child I enjoyed being on my own in nature, and moving to another country also made me think a lot about what it means to belong.
Over time I've realised that I don't think about belonging as being connected to one country or one place. For me, belonging comes from feeling connected to nature. That's what my work is really about. I hope people leave feeling that they are part of nature too.
Nature is also at the core of your practice, often inviting the audience to pause and reflect on their connection to it. How do you think artists can contribute to the bigger conversation on climate change and environmental responsibility in ways that perhaps facts and statistics alone cannot?
I don't see my work as directly talking about climate change. Instead, I try to help people reconnect with nature.
Facts and statistics are important, but sometimes they can feel overwhelming. Art can create an emotional connection. It can make someone stop, slow down and notice something they might otherwise walk past.
If someone watches one of my performances and afterwards looks at a tree differently or feels more connected to the natural world, then maybe they'll care for it a little more. I think small moments like that can make a difference.
While your work addresses urgent and important themes, you oftentimes do so through humour, wonder and playfulness. Why are these elements an important part of the conversation?
Because people are much more open when they're smiling.
Children immediately understand my work. They don't question it - they simply accept it and join in with their imagination. Adults often need a little more encouragement, but once they start smiling or laughing, something changes. They become curious again.
I think we all still have that sense of play inside us, even as adults. My work gives people permission to enjoy that feeling again. Once people feel relaxed and curious, they're much more open to thinking about bigger ideas.
The theme for this year’s Hay Festival Segovia is the pursuit of beauty in the face of immediacy and the superficial. What do you think we can learn from nature in relation to this theme?
Nature reminds us to slow down.
Everything today feels very fast. We're always looking at our phones, rushing somewhere or thinking about the next thing. Nature works differently. Trees grow slowly. Seasons change slowly. Nothing happens instantly.
When you spend time in nature, you begin to notice small things - the sound of birds, light through the trees or a butterfly landing nearby. Those moments remind us to be present.
For me, beauty isn't about perfection. It's about paying attention. Nature teaches us that every day.
Your work invites audiences to rethink their relationship with the natural world. What conversations do you hope both you and your audience leave with after your performances?
I hope people remember the experience for a long time.
We forget so many moments in life, but I hope unexpectedly meeting a walking birch tree in the street is something people never forget. If it makes someone smile, laugh, stop for a moment, or even hug the tree, then I've achieved something.
One of my favourite things is watching children's reactions. They look with complete honesty and wonder. They don't ask whether it's art or whether it's possible - they just enjoy the moment. I think adults can learn something from that.
If people leave feeling a little happier and a little more connected to nature, then that's enough for me. If they start seeing themselves as part of nature instead of separate from it, then even better.