Lovie Olivia (born Lovie Olivia NolanFrist Art Museum) is an American multidisciplinary visual artist. She uses the media of printmaking, painting, and installations to explore themes of gender, sexuality, race, class and power.
Early life and education Olivia is a native of Houston, Texas and attended Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (HSPVA).
Work As a multidisciplinary artist, Olivia works across various media including printmaking, painting, fresco, digital and graphic design, and audiovisual and sculptural installation. She frequently works on large wood panels covered in multiple layers of plaster which are manipulated and completed with fresco paintings. Olivia's work revolves around a number of interrelated issues important for a number underrepresented communities that all connect back to her own identity and life experience under the labeled categories of: "Female, Black, Gay, etc." The press release for Olivia's 2010 solo exhibition Thrice Removed at Spacetaker ARC Gallery in Houston, Texas, characterized the show as:A play on the phrase “twice removed” denoting familial relations through a system of “removals,” Olivia re-contextualizes this terminology to imply separation from African traditions and customs, male authority, and heterosexual privilege in this new solo show. Her work explores the multi-dimensionality of women of African Diaspora in light of the challenges and joy associated with a hybridized presence. Part autobiographical-part objective, Olivia zeroes in on the complex histories of racism, sexism, and classism in America, which intersect for ‘thrice’ the barrier to equal opportunity. Her exhibition, influenced by recorded conversations, video footage, folklore, and ancestral documents, redefines these selves outside conventional depictions in a celebration of identity.
Career Olivia is the recipient of the Individual Artist Grant Award 2009 and 2014 offered by Houston Arts Alliance and funded by the City of Houston. In 2018, she was on a panel assembled by the City of Houston to select artists to create 40 new mini-murals for the city. She is a member of the ROUX artist collective alongside Ann Johnson, Rabéa Ballin, and Delita Martin. She has participated in exhibitions, including:
2023 - Tinney Contemporary Art Gallery, Nashville, Tennessee 2023 - Frist Museum, Nashville, Tennessee 2023 - ART IS BOND., Houston, Texas 2020 - 9, Civic TV, Houston, Texas 2019 - The Wright Gallery in the College of Architecture at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 2019 - ACRE Projects, Chicago, Illinois 2019 - Presa House Gallery, San Antonio 2018 - Lawndale Art Center, Houston, Texas 2017 - Woman Made Gallery, Chicago, Illinois 2017 - Corridor Gallery, Brooklyn, New York 2017 - Galveston Arts Center(as ROUX), Galveston, Texas 2017 - Art League Houston (as ROUX), Houston, Texas 2016 - Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 2016 - Station Museum of Contemporary Art, Houston, Texas 2015 - Art League Houston, Texas 2015 - University Museum at Texas Southern University (as ROUX), Houston, Texas 2014 - Project Row Houses, Houston, Texas 2013 - Art League Houston, Texas 2013 - University Museum at Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas 2012 - Gallery M Squared, Houston, Texas 2011 - Houston Museum of African American Culture, Houston, Texas 2010 - Spacetaker Artist Resource Center, Houston, Texas
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