i8 Gallery is pleased to announce two simultaneous solo exhibitions by artist B. Ingrid Olson: History Mother and Little Sister, each on a separate floor of the Center’s landmark Le Corbusier building. The exhibitions feature site-specific installations informed by a feminist engagement with experiences of doubling and mirroring, gendered forms, reciprocity between photography and sculpture, and ways the artist’s body and each viewer’s body relate to the built environment.
In History Mother, Olson's photographic works from the past decade join new works, together articulating how the artist uses her own body as subject matter—bent knees, limbs, hands, and feet press up against mirrors and photographic surfaces, confusing points of contact between the figure and the picture plane—as well as the archival impulse that runs through her practice, with collections of objects, images, and gestures often gathered, repeated, and rhymed across the assembled works.
Olson’s first monograph will be published to accompany the presentation and will be available in October 2022. The innovative book design brings together extensive documentation of the site-specific installation, diagrammatic sketches, and reproductions of works made over the last decade, putting them into conversation with a selection of poetry and criticism that inform Olson’s practice.
