Professor of Sculpture Karyn Olivier has been selected to participate in this spring’s 2024 Whitney Biennial, a showcase of groundbreaking contemporary art from artists working across media and disciplines. 

Olivier is among 71 artists and collectives invited to show their work in the 81st iteration of the exhibition, which will open March 20. This year’s theme is Even Better Than the Real Thing and will explore “ideas of ‘the real’ to acknowledge that, today, society is at an inflection point, in part brought on by artificial intelligence challenging what we consider to be real, as well as critical discussions about identity,” according to the curators’ note. 

Olivier creates sculptures, installations, and public art. Her work often explores history, memory, and identity, often challenging the role of monuments and utilizing the role of the viewer as an essential component of a piece of work. 

Olivier has received numerous awards, including the 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 has a long career of working in the realm of public art. In 2023, the artist unveiled Approach at the Newark International Airport, Terminal A. In 2018, the artist created Witness, a permanent commission at the University of Kentucky recontextualizing previous artworks and histories on the university’s campus.

In addition to the upcoming Whitney Biennial, Olivier will participate in the Prospect.6 Triennial (New Orleans, LA) and the Malta Biennale (Valleta, Malta) in 2024. She will also unveil two new memorials in Philadelphia: one that honors a former slave at Stenton House, and the other commemorating more than 5,000 African Americans buried at Bethel Burying Ground. 

Recently, Olivier had solo exhibitions at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery and The List Gallery at Swarthmore College, and participated in Documenta 15.

The Whitney Biennial: Even Better Than the Real Thing is on view March 20–August 11, 2024.