When people hear the word “artist” they usually think of the people who create paintings, sculpture, or something decorative that could fit neatly in a room to enhance a space.
However, that is not the kind of work 53-year-old artist and academic Karyn Olivier produces. Influenced by her Trinidadian heritage, Olivier often uses objects to expand the mind and highlight history as well as today’s stories.
“You don’t need anything. You don’t need to go to an art supply store. Art is made from matter. And I think that goes back to Trinidad. A piece of wire and fabric and you’re a bat.
“What does it mean to transform yourself, even if it’s only for a couple of days, even if you have to go back to that job you don’t like?
"There is a density of meaning. There’s so little you need to have your imagination and your mind and your body and you heart allow yourself to transform, to be anything.”
She makes work that people can feel and experience rather than just observe.
“My art is about taking what we know, what’s familiar and just doing this little tweak so all of a sudden you see it with a new lens. Or you’re looking straight ahead, but what if I take those blinkers off and all of a sudden you look to your right, that thing in your periphery?
"And I think that really comes from Trinidad.”
A professor of sculpture at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University, Olivier creates public art, sculptures, installations and photography.
The Philadelphia-based artist has exhibited around the world, including the Gwangju and Busan Biennials in South Korea, the World Festival of Black Arts and Culture in Senegal, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Mattress Factory and Sculpture Center in New York.
She received a 2020 Anonymous Was A Woman grant, has been the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, and a Creative Capital Foundation grant.
[caption id="attachment_907416" align="alignnone" width="1024"] The back of the wall of bricks and clothing. -[/caption]
She was awarded the 2018-19 Rome Prize, the William H. Johnson Prize, and received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, the New York Foundation for the Arts Award, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award, and a Pew Fellowship.
She does not usually show in commercial galleries because her pieces are usually very large. However, she recently had her first at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York from June 25-July 30.
The exhibition, At The Intersection of Two Faults, had nine pieces.
“Usually, I work at a site and I think about the history of the site. I see who’s living there and want to make a work that’s about that place and it’s history. So it was exciting because I was able to think about this white cube gallery.”
She told WMN the idea was initially sparked when she was thinking of the Pitch Lake in La Brea, which is one of her favourite places.
“I was thinking about Trinidad having the large
