Fortified
2018–2020
Limited edition print, #16

Karyn Olivier (b. 1968, Trinidad and Tobago) received her M.F.A. at Cranbrook Academy of Art and her B.A. at Dartmouth College. Her 2020 exhibit at the ICA, Everything That’s Alive Moves, offered the rare opportunity to examine the recent trajectories of her investigation into scale, public memory, and their relation to issues of inclusivity and acceptance. The exhibition built on several public projects and commissions created by the artist in recent years through which she continued to revise, rework, and expand on key works.

Works in this exhibition brought together two themes the artist focused on in recent years: larger-than-life scale and the minute, modest gesture. A brick wall built using discarded clothing as mortar, evokes memories of laundry and bundled lives carries overtones of refugee structures and traces of bodies, was constructed on site at the ICA, and special edition prints were created of it.

Olivier is currently an associate professor of sculpture at Tyler School of Art and Architecture.