BIO
Eileen Olivieri is an award-winning artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her early inspirations include artists, Toshiko Takaezu, Audre Lorde, and Ingmar Bergman as well as the dense forest ecosystems of western Oregon where she grew up.
Olivieri’s directorial film debut, Ocean Keeper, premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival and on PBS/WNET, New York City in 2012. In 2014, Olivieri was an associate producer for the feature documentary, Dorothea Lange: Grab A Hunk of Lightning, by Dyanna Taylor. The film premiered nationally on PBS/American Masters and screened across the U.S. and Europe. Currently, she is developing the independent feature film Mink River, based on the novel by Brian Doyle. Olivieri exhibits her work both nationally and internationally and in diverse venues such as the Soap Factory in Minneapolis, MN, the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City, the historic Sacred Heart Mission Church in Ruidosa, TX, and the Stekkjarflot Nature Park in Reykjavik, Iceland.
In 2024, Olivieri received a faculty grant from the American Indian College Fund and attended the Bienno Borgo Artisti 2.0 residency in Italy. Later that year, she developed a solo exhibition in the Bienno Fresco Gallery titled Returning. In October 2024, Olivieri was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome where she launched an installation based on her original drawings. Other select awards include: The Idea Fund, Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, the U.S. Embassy Icelandic Art Exchange, and the New Visions Film Award. Olivieri presently teaches Queer Film/Text at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. She is an alum of both Lewis and Clark College where she studied Anthropology/Sociology (BA), and Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University where she studied Visual Arts (MFA).
ARTIST STATEMENT
My work primarily originates from site-specific, immersive experiences in diverse locations and antiquated spaces across the U.S. and beyond. Growing up in Oregon and witnessing the stark, extractive practices of clearcutting forests left a lasting imprint on my practice. My life-long commitment to transform the subtle and often ignored, into an overt visible form is an essential theme in my work. This is illuminated in my graphite/ink drawings and video pieces, which showcase a poetic mark-making process, mimicking the ephemeral rhythms of the natural world. My documentary and narrative films expound upon this theme by exploring untold socio-cultural histories.