o.f.

olivia fay

i’m a T’karonto (Toronto) based early career multi-disciplinary artist with a focus in ceramics, craft, and design. i was born in Treaty One Territory, Winnipeg, Manitoba, growing up between there, Vancouver, British Columbia and Denver, Colorado. wherever i have lived, the land, the environment, have preeminence in my work. my work deals with the evanescence of the body and how it relates to the environment. the earthly reality of being a neuro-divergent mixed race woman of immigrants on stolen land has created a distance between myself, my body, and the land, and yet i feel more connected to the land than i do to other humans, or my seemingly arbitrary racial, cultural identity. this is the common thread throughout my work, the existential, being in a body and interacting. i received my BFA with a major in Ceramics from NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

some thoughts...

I am very interested in sustainability in my practice and am always looking for ways to make my process more earth friendly, whether that be in reducing my use of plastic, using recycled materials to ship my work, or searching for local wild clay to use.

I am interested in studying art therapy, and facilitating that in the future. Art for me growing up was a means of survival, it was my voice when I had not the vocabulary nor capacity to articulate the trauma I experienced throughout my childhood. There are many reasons for my interest in the relationship between the body and the environment, a big one though is my experience of being mixed race. It’s the feeling of not belonging to anyone or any place, but amongst the trees, or laying in a field, or floating in the ocean, you’re right at home.