LEANNE OLIVIER

Leanne Olivier (born 1986) currently resides in the Kalahari, Northern Cape. Her artworks have received recognition on multiple platforms and art competitions including: The Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize 2023 Top 30 finalist (Traditional art category); the Portrait Awards 2023 (3rd Place); Top 40 in 2021, 2019 and 2017; the Sasol New Signature’s Competition 2014 and 2008; the Thami Mnyele Fine Arts Awards 2018 and 2015 and the overall winner amongst emerging artists, Art Lovers Gallery in 2014.  Olivier has exhibited extensively in group and solo shows, as well as participating in Art Fairs and traveling exhibitions both locally and abroad, including The Venice Bienalle. 

Olivier is a South African artist whose practice is immersed in the visual and symbolic storytelling of liminal spaces in the human experience. Her work borrows from different cultures, mythologies, religions and schools of thought while questioning the fallacy of concreteness, placed or misplaced. Her investigation into these narratives often manifests through the shapeshifting of the archetypal Feminine.

Olivier’s classical approach towards figurative realism is blended with earthly matter such as clay, hematite, bone meal, ash, mica and charcoal. These serve as metaphorical conduits; a return to essence. Her process takes place in the suburban cave through a ceremonial collaboration with the people she paints.  Central to Olivier’s practice is the act of becoming and yet, simultaneously the unbecoming of self.