Visiting Professor: Karyn Olivier
The open lecture is part of the Academy of Fine Arts’s Visiting Professor programme. Welcome!
Karyn Olivier, who has a noted career in the realm of public art, will discuss the major themes within her work, as well as the challenges and responsibilities of working in the public. Her artistic practice frequently merges conflicting histories and collective memory with present-day narratives. Actively engaged in reinterpreting the role of monuments, Olivier has created both temporary and permanent sculptures and installations that challenge our notions of historical facts. With recurring themes of absence, invisibility, and displacement, the artist intervenes in “blind spots” – unseen and unconsidered spaces – drawing attention to the periphery.
Karyn Olivier, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago, creates sculptures, installations and public art. In 2024, Olivier will unveil two memorials in Philadelphia (USA) – honoring a former slave at Stenton House, and commemorating more than 5,000 African Americans buried at Bethel Burying Ground. This year Olivier presented her second solo show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (NYC). In 2022 Olivier participated in Documenta 15 and installed a permanent commission for Newark Liberty International Airport.
Olivier has exhibited at the Gwangju and Busan biennials, the World Festival of Black Arts and Culture (Dakar, Senegal), The Studio Museum in Harlem (NYC), The Whitney Museum of Art (NYC), MoMA P.S.1 (NYC), The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, The Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh), SculptureCenter (NYC), ICA Watershed Boston, among others. Solo museum exhibitions include Everything That’s Alive Moves at Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (2020), and A Closer Look at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis (2007).
Olivier has received numerous awards, including the 2018–2019 Nancy B. Negley Rome Prize, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, the New York Foundation for the Arts Award, a Pollock- Krasner Foundation grant, and a Creative Capital Foundation grant.
Olivier’s work has been reviewed in ArtForum, The New York Times; Time Out New York; The Village Voice; Art in America; Flash Art; Mousse; The Washington Post; Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art; Frieze; Hyperallergic, among others. She is a sculpture professor at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University.
Karyn Olivier, who has a noted career in the realm of public art, will discuss the major themes within her work, as well as the challenges and responsibilities of working in the public. Her artistic practice frequently merges conflicting histories and collective memory with present-day narratives. Actively engaged in reinterpreting the role of monuments, Olivier has created both temporary and permanent sculptures and installations that challenge our notions of historical facts. With recurring themes of absence, invisibility, and displacement, the artist intervenes in “blind spots” – unseen and unconsidered spaces – drawing attention to the periphery.
Karyn Olivier, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago, creates sculptures, installations and public art. In 2024, Olivier will unveil two memorials in Philadelphia (USA) – honoring a former slave at Stenton House, and commemorating more than 5,000 African Americans buried at Bethel Burying Ground. This year Olivier presented her second solo show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (NYC). In 2022 Olivier participated in Documenta 15 and installed a permanent commission for Newark Liberty International Airport.
Olivier has exhibited at the Gwangju and Busan biennials, the World Festival of Black Arts and Culture (Dakar, Senegal), The Studio Museum in Harlem (NYC), The Whitney Museum of Art (NYC), MoMA P.S.1 (NYC), The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, The Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh), SculptureCenter (NYC), ICA Watershed Boston, among others. Solo museum exhibitions include Everything That’s Alive Moves at Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (2020), and A Closer Look at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis (2007).
Olivier has received numerous awards, including the 2018–2019 Nancy B. Negley Rome Prize, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, the New York Foundation for the Arts Award, a Pollock- Krasner Foundation grant, and a Creative Capital Foundation grant.
Olivier’s work has been reviewed in ArtForum, The New York Times; Time Out New York; The Village Voice; Art in America; Flash Art; Mousse; The Washington Post; Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art; Frieze; Hyperallergic, among others. She is a sculpture professor at Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University.