Olivia Mattison is a Vancouver based student and artist, currently dragging out her B.F.A for as long as possible at Emily Carr University. After six years of mistakes in Vancouver- both academic and personal- Olivia has formed an interdisciplinary practice firmly grounded in her own experiences.
Whether this stems from a tenuously repressed childhood memory or a deep-seated narcissistic personality disorder; Olivia’s works are probes into her own unstable sense of self as she flails around desperately trying to understand herself and the world around her.
Much to her surprise, this (literal) vanity project connects to people other than herself. No matter what medium Olivia uses to create these images of herself they are stand-ins; stand-ins not just for the gross and unhappy parts of Olivia but for everyone who feels that way.
Olivia’s real joy in art making (and ostensibly her only real talent) is that after almost a decade of periodically trying to off herself, she is intimately familiar with all the nasty, upsetting and repulsive parts of herself; and most importantly how to laugh at them. Through her art Olivia uses her own depression, anxiety, humour, her occasional victories and more frequent failures, to create a language which can help others speak about their own similar experiences.
奥利维亚·马蒂森 (Olivia Mattison) 是立足于温哥华的艺术家,目前在艾米丽·卡尔大学(Emily Carr University) 漫长地攻读艺术学士学位。在温哥华经历了六年的错误(学术和个人错误)后,Olivia在自己的经验上牢固地建立了自己的跨界艺术实践。
这是否源于童年时期对记忆力的压抑或深深的自恋型人格障碍;奥利维亚的作品探究了自己不稳定的自我意识,因为她拼命四处张望,试图了解自己和周围的世界。
令她吃惊的是,这个字面意义上的自我满足的项目居然也触动了他人。无论Olivia使用哪种媒介创作这些自画像,它们都是替身。这些替身不仅代表了奥利维亚的荒唐和不幸的部分,也代表了其他有此感受的人们的一部分。
奥利维亚在艺术创作上的真正快乐(也是她唯一的才华)是,在经历了近十年的周期性尝试之后,她已非常熟悉所有令自己讨厌、沮丧和反感的地方,并一笑了之。她通过自己的艺术,运用自己的沮丧、焦虑、幽默、胜利和频繁的失败,创造出一种可以帮助他人谈论类似经历的语言。