“Karyn Olivier’s work elegantly reminds us of the constantly mutable nature of the Park and its history.”

Creativetime

Karyn Olivier (b. 1968, Trinidad & Tobago)

Karyn Olivier received her MFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art and her BA at

Dartmouth College. Art critic Donna Kosloskie says, “I am consistently

amazed by those who have strong voices, strong visions of the world, and

are able to express themselves without borders or boundaries to create their

beliefs for others to experience. Karyn is a thinker. A sculptor of social

concepts. A woman who recalls fashion, poetry and art criticism to develop

her rounded understanding of what it means to be a human, creative and

otherwise, in today’s world.”

Olivier has exhibited nationally and internationally at such venues as the World

Festival of Black Arts and Culture (Dakar, Senegal), the Gwangju and Busan

Biennials (Korea), the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the Contemporary Arts

Museum (Houston), the Wanas Foundation (Sweden), the Whitney Museum of

Art at Altria (NY), MoMA P.S.1 (NY), Uferhallen (Berlin), the SculptureCenter

(NY), Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, and the Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh).

Olivier has been the recipient of many awards and grants, including a John

Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the Joan Mitchell

Foundation Award, the William H. Johnson Prize, an Art Matters grant, and the

Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award. Olivier has completed

residencies at the Core Program

(MFAH), Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and

Sculpture. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Time Out New

York, the Village Voice, Art in America, and Frieze, among others. Olivier is

currently an Assistant Professor of sculpture at Tyler School of Art.