Karyn Olivier

Karyn Olivier lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. She considers history, displacement, migration, and visibility/invisibility through conceptual sculptures made of industrial materials and found objects. In these sculptures, conventional figuration is absent, but the vestiges of bodies are central. With this transposal of the human subject, Olivier collapses multiple histories, memories, and times, creating singular material snapshots of larger processes of movement and change.

Olivier has had solo exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, and the University of Buffalo Art Gallery, NY, as well as at galleries in Italy, Mexico, and the US. She has participated in group exhibitions at Documenta 15, Kassel, Germany; the Gwangju and Busan Biennials, South Korea; the World Festival of Black Arts and Culture, Dakar, Senegal; Whitney Museum of Art of American Art, New York; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; MoMA PS1, Queens; Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh; and more.

(as of 2023)