Karyn Olivier: Everything That’s Alive Moves: ICA Philadelphia

Everything That’s Alive Moves offers the rare opportunity to examine the recent trajectories of Karyn Olivier’s investigation into scale, public memory, and their relation to issues of inclusivity and acceptance. The exhibition builds on several public projects and commissions created by the artist in recent years and continues to revise, rework, and expand on key works.

Works in this exhibition bring together two themes the artist has focused on in recent years: larger-than-life scale and the minute, modest gesture. A new obelisk sculpture, a fully-functioning carousel for one rider, a large car made entirely of repurposed shoes —gathered for export to poor countries—and a brick wall built using discarded clothing as mortar, evoking memories of laundry and bundled lives carries overtones of refugee structures and traces of bodies, are among the works selected to be reimagined and constructed on-site at ICA.

Karyn Olivier: Everything That’s Alive Moves is organized by Anthony Elms, ICA Daniel and Brett Sundheim Chief Curator. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated monograph that will be released in 2020.