ARTIST STATEMENT
My work examines how misogynistic language and inherited gender roles function as quiet systems of control—spoken casually, circulated widely, and absorbed into the body. Through altered found objects and figurative installation, I confront the ways these phrases and expectations persist across domestic space, culture, and now, digital environments. In “I Shall Be Released”, the act of breaking free from prescribed gender roles is rendered through fractured glass, suggesting that liberation is rarely gentle or permitted—it is seized.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Olivia Rachel Austin is a multidisciplinary artist whose work examines power, language, and inherited systems of value through altered objects, drawing, and installation. Working with domestic materials and found objects, Austin interrogates how gendered roles and social hierarchies are constructed, internalized, and enforced within everyday life.
Austin earned an MFA in Studio Art from Florida Atlantic University and a BFA in Studio Art with an emphasis in Drawing from the University of Georgia. Her practice is grounded in research-driven inquiry, combining feminist theory, cultural history, and material investigation. Through processes such as burning, breaking, framing, and recontextualizing objects, she transforms familiar forms into sites of resistance and confrontation.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and engages themes of misogynistic language, emotional labor, and the tension between public composure and private experience. In addition to her studio practice, Austin has worked extensively in arts education, teaching painting and drawing at the university level and advocating for equitable learning environments. Austin’s work positions art as a means of dissent—making visible what is often dismissed, silenced, or normalized—and invites viewers to reconsider the systems that shape both personal identity and collective experience.
© Olivia Rachel Austin