Lovie Olivia

Last updated
Lovie Olivia
Born
Houston, Texas
NationalityAmerican
Education Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts
Style
AwardsHouston Arts Alliance Individual Artist Grant 2009

Houston Arts Alliance Individual Artist Grant 2014

Website www.lovieolivia.com

Lovie Olivia is an American multidisciplinary visual artist. She uses the media of printmaking, painting, and installations to explore themes of gender, sexuality, race, class and power. [1] [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Olivia is a native of Houston, Texas and attended Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA). [3] She frequently works on large wood panels covered in multiple layers of plaster which are manipulated and completed with fresco paintings. [4]

Work

As a multidisciplinary artist, Olivia works across various media including printmaking, painting, fresco, digital and graphic design, and audiovisual and sculptural installation. [4] [5] Olivia's work revolves around a number of interrelated issues important for a number underrepresented communities that all connect back to her own identity and life experience under the labeled categories of: "Female, Black, Gay, etc." [4] The press release for Olivia's 2010 solo exhibition Thrice Removed at Spacetaker ARC Gallery in Houston, Texas, characterizes the show as:

A play on the phrase “twice removed” denoting familial relations through a system of “removals,” Olivia re-contextualizes this terminology to imply separation from African traditions and customs, male authority, and heterosexual privilege in this new solo show. Her work explores the multi-dimensionality of women of African Diaspora in light of the challenges and joy associated with a hybridized presence. Part autobiographical-part objective, Olivia zeroes in on the complex histories of racism, sexism, and classism in America, which intersect for ‘thrice’ the barrier to equal opportunity. Her exhibition, influenced by recorded conversations, video footage, folklore, and ancestral documents, redefines these selves outside conventional depictions in a celebration of identity.

In these four sentences alone, readers are made aware of a number of hinge-points for Olivia's work: the ways in which privilege, power, and tradition are shaped and overwritten by monolithic discourses of race, sex, and class. In Thrice Removed , working against the potential to flatten or reduce underrepresented identities, Olivia complicates and expands identity through numerous media and "documents" that emphasize the "truth" of such identity, and yet she also allows space for the discomfort, tensions, and contradictions inherent to such a kind of "hybridized presence." Painting and carving into plaster and pigment, Olivia's "contemporary frescoes" for this exhibition marked a departure in her work to that point. [6]

Career

Olivia is the recipient of the Individual Artist Grant Award 2009 and 2014 offered by Houston Arts Alliance and funded by the City of Houston. [7] [3] In 2018 she was on a panel assembled by the City of Houston to select artists to create 40 new mini-murals for the city. [8] She is a member of the ROUX artist collective alongside Ann Johnson, Rabéa Ballin, and Delita Martin. [9] She has participated in exhibitions, including:

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References

  1. ↑ "ABOUT". LOVIE OLIVIA. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  2. ↑ "LOVIE OLIVIA | OPEN THE DOOR". openthedoor-houston.com. Archived from the original on 2013-02-15.
  3. 1 2 3 "Interview: Lovie Olivia". Art League Houston. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  4. 1 2 3 "Interview: Lovie Olivia". Art League Houston. Retrieved 2018-03-26.
  5. 1 2 "DaMask by Lovie Olivia | FreshArts.org". www.fresharts.org. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  6. ↑ Schulze, Troy (2010-08-10). "Artist Quotes: Lovie Olivia". Houston Press. Retrieved 2018-04-21.
  7. ↑ "Houston Arts Alliance" (PDF).
  8. ↑ "New mini murals by new artists coming to Houston neighborhoods". KHOU. Retrieved 2018-04-15.
  9. ↑ "Interview: Lovie Olivia". Art League Houston. Retrieved 2019-03-22.
  10. ↑ Hays, Jodi (2023-10-24). "Lovie Olivia's Interdisciplinary Work Pushes Boundaries by Ignoring Them". Nashville Scene. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  11. ↑ "Why this new Frist Art Museum exhibit made the New York Times list of must-see exhibits this fall". The Tennessean. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  12. ↑ Schiche, Ericka (2023-05-19). "Lovie Olivia Celebrates Black Culture, Womanhood In Montrose Art Exhibition — This Artist Tells Intelligent Stories". PaperCity Magazine. Retrieved 2024-02-19.
  13. ↑ "Civic TV Presents: 9 | Sawyer Yards | Houston, TX". www.sawyeryards.com. Retrieved 2020-06-13.
  14. ↑ "The Wright Gallery Presents "She Matters" Exhibit". www.austinmonthly.com. Retrieved 2019-03-22.
  15. ↑ "Anarchival Impulse" . Retrieved 2019-03-22.
  16. ↑ "February 2019". Presa House Gallery. Retrieved 2019-03-22.
  17. ↑ "Lovie Olivia's 'Tuft & Facet' at Lawndale". Glasstire. 2018-11-09. Retrieved 2019-03-22.
  18. ↑ "20th International Open | Woman Made Gallery". womanmade.org. Retrieved 2019-03-22.
  19. ↑ "Mirrored Migration". Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation. Retrieved 2019-03-22.
  20. ↑ "Exhibitions". Galveston Arts Center. Retrieved 2019-03-22.
  21. ↑ "In Art League Houston Exhibit, Women Artists of Color Grapple with Police Violence". The Texas Observer. 2017-03-30. Retrieved 2019-03-22.
  22. ↑ "Art Exhibit by Lovia". VU Calendar. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  23. ↑ "FRIENDLY FIRE: Houston Sculpture – Station Museum of Contemporary Art". stationmuseum.com. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  24. ↑ "University Museum at Texas Southern University". University Museum at Texas Southern University. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  25. ↑ "Round 39". Project Row Houses. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  26. ↑ "Project Row Houses draws from past, looks to the future - HoustonChronicle.com". www.houstonchronicle.com. 2014-01-23. Retrieved 2019-03-20.
  27. ↑ "University Museum at Texas Southern University". University Museum at Texas Southern University. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  28. ↑ "Stir – Glasstire". glasstire.com. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  29. ↑ Osborne, Altamese (2011-05-24). "Printmatters Houston Spices Things Up with The Roux". Houston Press. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
  30. ↑ "Spacetaker ARC Exhibition: "Thrice Removed" by Lovie Olivia - Opening Reception". Eventful. Retrieved 2017-03-11.
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