Olive Diamond, A Forgotten Dance, 2024.
Photo: MATTHEW KROENING, COURTESY THE ARTIST AND ANAT EBGI, LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK
Next Big Thing: Olive Diamond
The Los Angeles-based creative’s work is centered on themes of migration and movement with a dose of mysticism
Artist Olive Diamond, in her former Los Angeles studio. Photo: NATHAN JORGENSON
“I want my works to feel like a contemporary relic,” says Olive Diamond, whose dreamy ceramic tableaux are centered on themes of migration and movement with a dose of mysticism. “I am thinking a lot about the history of people moving across the world during times of hardship; how things cycle and repeat and what remains.”
Informed by her Jewish heritage and the family stories of survival recounted to her as a child, her work is rendered with a youthful naivete and she mines the depths of human experience through shared universal struggle. The almost abstract landscapes feature what she calls “shadow figures,” which act as an “imprint of the human form and experience.”
“The juxtapositions in Olive’s work force us to remember that the truth lies deep beyond the surface and we should take the time to find it”
allison K. berg, art collector and philanthropist
Olive Diamond, The Stirring, 2024. Photo: MATTHEW KROENING, COURTESY THE ARTIST AND ANAT EBGI, LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK
Personal passion: “I love experimenting and making new glazes,” says Diamond, whose Los Angeles studio includes areas for painting and ceramics. “It is so wild because I am using glaze like paint, and there are so many variables. I love letting the alchemy happen.”
Inspiration: “I cannot get enough of the recovered frescoes from Pompeii. I love Viola Frey, who was an experimental ceramist and a pioneer. I also love the spirituality of Marc Chagall and Leonora Carrington; I’m a big Surrealist fan. And I love Dieter Roth.”
Up next: Diamond will be presenting at the Dallas Art Fair in April and is preparing for an exhibition at Martha’s Contemporary Tribeca gallery in September.
Olive Diamond, Lock and Key, 2024. Photo: MATTHEW KROENING, COURTESY THE ARTIST AND ANAT EBGI, LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK
Olive Diamond, To Be Sung and Remembered, 2024. Photo: MATTHEW KROENING, COURTESY THE ARTIST AND ANAT EBGI, LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2024 Winter Issue under the headline “Next Big Things.” Subscribe to the magazine.
Cover: Olive Diamond, A Forgotten Dance, 2024.
Photo: MATTHEW KROENING, COURTESY THE ARTIST AND ANAT EBGI, LOS ANGELES/NEW YORK
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