Karyn Olivier: Everything That’s Alive Moves

Multimedia reveries on the power and rhetoric of public monuments and the persistence of the political past

This publication documents the first solo museum exhibition of Philadelphia-based sculptor Karyn Olivier (born 1968), focusing on recent trajectories of her investigation into scale and public memory, particularly as activated for monuments and memorials. After several years developing a number of public commissions, and a year’s study in Rome, Olivier revisited a handful of recent works alongside her first forays into video and sound, to consider the conflicted histories and unresolved spaces monuments too often shadow. Organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, the exhibition traveled to the University at Buffalo Art Galleries. Exhibition images from the venues are accompanied by the full narrative text for Oliver’s first video; an overview essay from ICA Daniel and Brett Sundheim Chief Curator Anthony Elms; UB Art Galleries curator Liz Park’s in-depth consideration of Moving the Obelisk; and a critical assessment by art historian Andrianna Campbell-LaFleur.