Born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1968, and raised in the United States, Olivier received an M.F.A from Cranbrook Academy of Art and a B.A. at Dartmouth College.
In 2024 Olivier reached the Ellsworth Kelly away for Visual Arts. She has been the recipient of the RAIR (Recycled Artists in Residency) Fellowship Residency (2022), Rome Prize (2018), the New York Foundation for the Arts Award (2011), the William H. Johnson Prize (2010), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2007), the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award (2007), and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award (2003).
Upcoming, Oliver will have a major solo exhibiton at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD), oening in 2026. Important solo exhibitions also include Everything That’s Alive Moves at Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia (2020), which traveled to University of Buffalo Art Gallery, and A Closer Look at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis (2007). The artist’s work was featured in the Whitney Biennial (2024); Prospect 6, New Orleans (2024), Busan Biennial, Korea (2006) and Gwangju Biennial (2008). Olivier’s work has also been included in notable group exhibitions at the ICA Boston Watershed (2022); Parrish Art Museum, NY (2022); Ulrich Museum of Art (2013); World Festival of Black Arts and Cultures in Dakar, Senegal (2010); Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2007); Whitney Museum of Art, New York (2006); Studio Museum in Harlem (2005); MoMA P.S.1 (2005); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2004); SculptureCenter, New York (2004), and Mattress Factory (2006), among others.
Olivier has a long career of working in the realm of public art. In 2024, Olivier created a new memorial at Stenton Park in Philadelphia, honoring Dinah, a former enslaved woman who saved an historic mansion from burning by the British in the revolutionary war. 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. The previous year, Olivier completed a large-scale commissioned work, The Battle is Joined, for Philadelphia’s Mural Arts program in historic Vernon Park. In 2015, she created a site-specific work in New York City’s Central Park for the Creative Time exhibition Drifting in Daylight, as well as a permanent sculpture for Long Island City’s Hunter Point South Park entitled Tetherball Monument,sponsored by NYC’s Percent for Art program.
Karyn Olivier’s work can be found in the permanent collections of Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Cranbrook Art Museum, and The Studio Museum of Harlem.