Jermaine Ollivierre

Lives and works in Montgomery County, PA, USA

Artist statement

Remembering is a way of time travel. This traveling begins with histories, together through shared experiences, through storytelling, through evidence, through throughing. I hold histories. I hold histories together in my work, building and rebuilding timelines, waiting for the appropriate object/material to reveal itself. There is a hypersensitivity to spaces and materials that I trust. I collaborate with objects and space by listening to what the material wants to say and then initiate play. The unfinished, in-progress choices made in my work mirror society. I'm interested in that space between uniformity and chaos—I'm interested in that betweenness. This betweenness is where I've grounded myself and where play starts to happen. The way I search for and find play is an essential prerequisite when I need clarity. This abstract type of play is rooted in childhood innocence and conjured up in the public sphere, which creates another dimension in public and private spaces. I intentionally use autobiographical experiences as my source material, exposing my internal struggles. I constantly revisit childhood moments to redefine, reshape, and remember myself. This process of peeling away societal influences and norms reveals difficult truths, which continue to further my inquiry into the human psyche. My goal was to levitate, and accidentally, I learned how to take flight and coincidentally traveled through time. This omnipresent state of mind waits for history to remember...

Artwork