Carter Burden Gallery presents On the Wall featuring the installation “Out of Body” by Olivia Beens.

In her installation Out of Body, Olivia Beens explores our changing times, bodies, memories, and collected possessions by divulging aspects of the self. This installation resulted from the need to purge unwanted items in her life, and, by chance, rediscovered bygone treasures, and memories. She found the process of revisiting objects that once held interest and value, X- rays, trinkets, and items thought lost, illuminates her personal history. Utilizing these objects

Beens incorporates the mark of her hand by soaking, scrubbing, and scratching photographic emulsion away, adding paint to the backlit images, and then stringing them together in sequences. The sequences can be read and interpreted as light, shadow, and reflection, revealing otherwise reticent information. She adds, “As an older adult, I value and want to honor what is behind me and what has yet to come.”

Sculptor/educator Olivia Beens, born in 1948 in the Netherlands of Czech and Dutto parents and lived in Portugal until age 7. After receiving a BFA from Pratt Institute in 1977 and an MFA from Hunter College in 1982 she moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan where she still lives and works. During the 1980’s she exhibited installation and performance work in many alternative art galleries including Franklin Furnace, ABC No Rio, PS 122 and was a member of artists groups such as Colab, PADD, and other political art groups.

In 2014 and 2015 she was a (SPARC) Artist In Residence at Sirovich Senior Center and completed a series of ceramic murals that are permanently installed in the grand auditorium. She has taught through many arts organizations, worked for the New York City Department of Education, Brooklyn College and Pratt Institute. Beens has received commissions for public artworks througartworksArt for Public School and has been awarded a New York State Council on the Arts fellowship as well as residencies at the Mac Dowell colony for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Hambidge Center and received a Fulbright-Hayes fellowship to Turkey, and traveled to India and Portugal with grants.