Photo Credit: Corey Wilkinson

Olivia Rozema is an artist from Grimsby, Ontario. She received a BaH in Visual Art and Classics from McMaster University in 2014 and an MFA in sculpture from the University of Regina in 2016. Rozema has facilitated workshops and arts based programming throughout Canada, and has participated in artist in residence programs, including a long-term residency at Medalta in the Historic Clay District International Artist in Residence. Currently she is a participant in the Canadian Forces Artist Program (CFAP).

Olivia has an obsessive interest with processes that are often associated with the abject and grotesque. She reframes the subjects of her obsessions as formal sculptures by altering scale and transforming surface. Mimicking the aesthetic of artefacts, her sculptures are approachable in a way that natural specimens often are not; inviting the audience to examine and scrutinize what otherwise might repulse them. Her subjects are made strange in both form and texture in order to increase the length of perception because perception is an end in itself, and must be prolonged.