Karyn Olivier

PROVENANCE: Courtesy of the Artist

Double Houses was taken in the Third Ward neighborhood in Houston (near Project Row Houses). I passed by them often, witnessing the subtle shifts in their stature–the impact of time and nature on these human-made shelters/protectors

Karyn Olivier is a Philadelphia based artist and educator who creates public art, sculpture, and installations that expose social, political, and economic contradictions and the residue of slavery in contemporary culture. She has exhibited at the Gwangju and Busan Biennials, World Festival of Black Arts and Culture (Dakar, Senegal), The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Whitney Museum of Art, MoMA P.S.1, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, The Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh), Sculpture Center (NY), Drexel University, the University of the Arts, Ulrich Museum of Art, University of Delaware Museum, among others. In 2017 Olivier installed a large-scale commissioned work for Philadelphia’s Mural Arts program in historic Vernon Park. In 2015 Olivier created public works for Creative Time in Central Park and NYC’s Percent for Art program. She received the 2018-19 Rome Prize and has been the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, the New York Foundation for the Arts Award, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, the William H. Johnson Prize, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award and a Creative Capital Foundation grant. She was recently selected as the artist for the Dinah Memorial Project, a memorial to onetime enslaved housekeeper at the Stenton House in Philadelphia known for saving the mansion from being burned by the British. Olivier is currently an associate professor of sculpture at Tyler School of Art and Architecture.