KARYN OLIVIER, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago, creates sculptures, installations and public art. In 2026, Olivier will unveil a memorial commemorating more than 5,000 African Americans buried at Bethel Burying Ground (Philadelphia, PA), and will present a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit. In 2024, she participated in the Whitney Biennial (NY, NY), La Trienal at El Museo del Barrio (NY, NY), the Malta Biennale (Valleta, Malta), and Prospect.6 Triennial (New Orleans, LA). Last year, Olivier unveiled the Stenton House Memorial, Right Here, honoring a formerly enslaved servant, Dinah and was selected to create a public installation in Milwaukee, memorializing Vel R. Phillips, the late politician, attorney, judge, and civil rights activist. In addition, Olivier created an installation at Rice University (Houston, TX). In 2023, Olivier presented her second solo show at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery. In 2023, Olivier presented solo shows at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and Swarthmore College (Swarthmore, PA). In 2022 Olivier participated in Documenta 15 and installed a permanent commission for Newark Airport’s Terminal A.

Olivier has exhibited at the Gwangju and Busan biennials (South Korea), the World Festival of Black Arts and Culture (Dakar, Senegal), The Studio Museum in Harlem, The Whitney Museum of Art, MoMA P.S.1, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Contemporary Art Museum Houston, The Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh), SculptureCenter (New York), ICA Watershed Boston, among others. Solo exhibitions include Everything That’s Alive Moves at Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (2020), and A Closer Look at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis (2007).

Olivier has received numerous awards, including a 2025 USA Fellowship, a 2020 Anonymous Was a Woman Award, the 2018–2019 Nancy B. Negley Rome Prize, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, a 2019 PEW Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts Award, a Pollock- Krasner Foundation grant, the William H. Johnson Prize, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award, a Creative Capital Foundation grant, and a Harpo Foundation grant.

Olivier’s work has been reviewed in ArtForum, The New York Times; Time Out New York; The Village Voice; Art in America; Flash Art; Mousse; The Washington Post; Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art; Frieze; the Philadelphia Inquirer and Hyperallergic, among others. She is a sculpture professor at Tyler School of Art and Architecture.