Sculptor Karyn Olivier, who earned her MFA in ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2001, opens a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit this Saturday, Aug. 8, with free public programming from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
"Bend, Break, Mend" fills MOCAD's Woodward Gallery through Oct. 11 and features recent works alongside newly commissioned sculptures drawing on Detroit's industrial history, waterways and postindustrial landscapes. The show is part of MOCAD's twentieth anniversary season and was funded by the 2024 Ellsworth Kelly Award, a $45,000 grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
The exhibition was curated by Jova Lynne, MOCAD's co-director and artistic director, who earned her MFA in photography from Cranbrook in 2017. Lynne was named the museum's inaugural artistic director in April 2023.
According to the MOCAD exhibition description, Olivier's practice explores what she calls "amplified absences," spaces defined not by emptiness but by lingering presence and possibility. The newly commissioned pieces draw from the textures of the region, its architectures and postindustrial terrains, considering how landscapes absorb traces of migration, labor and collective survival.
Admission is free.
Aug. 8 programming
Opening day at MOCAD, 4454 Woodward Ave. in Detroit:
- 11 a.m.–3 p.m. — Family Day with hands-on art-making activities
- 3–5 p.m. — In-conversation event with Olivier, scholar Samantha A. Noël and Lynne
A Cranbrook connection close to home
Residents don't have to drive to Detroit to see Olivier's work. Her 2023 piece Driftwood, Door, Man, and Boat (Gorée Island/Matinicus Island) is on view at Cranbrook Art Museum in Bloomfield Hills as part of Labyrinth/Laboratory: Selections from the Cranbrook Collection.
Olivier will also return to the Cranbrook campus for a talk at the art museum in October, timed to the closing of the MOCAD exhibition. A specific date has not been announced.
Born in Trinidad and Tobago and raised in Brooklyn, Olivier is an associate professor of sculpture at Temple University's Tyler School of Art and Architecture. Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award. Her work has appeared in the Whitney Biennial and is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Cranbrook Art Museum and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
According to Cranbrook Academy of Art, Olivier is a former resident of southeastern Michigan.
