The Platform Gallery – Karyn Olivier

Tousled reeds, diagonal sheets of water, and horizontal flows of river and trees are echoed by accumulations of fibers and cloth in Karyn Olivier’s photographic banners. As the artist balances references to natural and human-made worlds, she seems to respond to The Delaware Contemporary’s setting: a relatively recently developed commercial, residential, and entertainment district along the Christina River.

The water elements in Olivier’s images are generally restricted to blues, greens, grays, and blacks. In contrast, bands and tangles of clothing display a motley array of colors, softened and individuated by wear and washing. Her passages of water and clothing share a quality of movement, visually reinforcing one another to produce compositions in which individual components—ripples of water, single garments—accumulate into dynamic, expansive forces. Olivier’s work may cause us to reflect on who and what were displaced as Wilmington’s Riverfront developed, to consider where we exist presently in the flux of the city, and to care about achieving a harmonized ecology going forward.

Born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, Olivier is based in Philadelphia where she is a professor at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture. In 2020, her work was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and the University at Buffalo Art Galleries. An artist engaged with creating new models for public art and monuments, Olivier is currently creating two permanent memorials in Philadelphia: at Bethel Burying Ground, a nineteenth-century African American cemetery; and at Stenton House, in commemoration of a heroic eighteenth-century former slave named Dinah. Olivier has been recognized with numerous awards and fellowships, including an Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2020), a Pew Fellowship (2019), and The Rome Prize (2018).

Curated by Kristen Hileman

The Platform Gallery