Ceramics Alum Karyn Olivier Opens Solo "How a Home is Made" at Tonya Bonakdar Gallery
Exhibition view of “Karyn Olivier: How a Home is Made”. Courtesy Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.
Karyn Olivier (MFA Ceramics 2001) currently has a new solo exhibition on view at Tonya Bonakdar Gallery. In How a Home is Made Oliver explores themes of displacement, migration, and absence using discarded items and common construction materials. She incorporates photographic elements with familiar objects offering viewers space to reflect on building practices, excess consumption, and Western ideas of progress in late capitalist societies.
Olivier recently completed a two-year residency at RAIR (Recycled Artist in Residency),* which was a major inspiration for How A Home Is Made, where she continues her exploration of the processing and repurposing of materials, and to conjure new objects with reimagined functions, meanings, and futures.
Included in the exhibition is a reference to a film by fellow Academy alums Charles and Ray Eames in her piece “Powers of 10 (Home kit).” The aggregate materials in the “kit”, presented on a custom dolly, can be understood as a portal into a geological time and our current epoch, the Anthropocene, which is defined by humankind’s impact on the planet.
Learn more:
Karyn Olivier: How a Home is Made – Tanya Bonakdar Gallery
2020 RAIR Resident Karyn Olivier – RAIR
Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe – Eames Office
