Olivia Chin

Olivia Chin is a Naarm (Melbourne, VIC) based multidisciplinary artist whose practice merges sculptural, textile, and oil painting disciplines. Rooted in her diasporic heritage—spanning Asian and French ancestral trajectories—Chin’s practice explores the migrations of bodies, materials, and memories across global landscapes. Her work traces the pathways of human movement and resource transformation, examining how cultural identities and material histories are reshaped by displacement, exchange, and interconnection.

Art making is used as a tool to contemplate multifarious topics where Chin archives her personal investigation. She is interested in how memory and histories become embedded in art objects, much like the temporal dimensions of the physical landscape. These investigations deeply inform her current works, which explore the intersections of time, material transformation, and the continual evolution of resources.

Her practice is fundamentally grounded in a deep reverence and awe for nature, critically examining ecological processes as frameworks for understanding material transformation and cultural interaction. Informed by meditative deep listening and playful engagement with her surroundings, Chin explores the intricate connections between human experience and broader natural systems. Through bright, layered compositions, Chin adds to the memory layers within the landscapes and scenes she inhabits, inviting viewers to see their world anew and reconsider their place within the ongoing transformations of the natural world.

Chin graduated from a Bachelor of Fine Art in Sculpture from the National Art School of Australia in 2015 and in 2024 was a finalist in the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, the Mosman Art Prize, Fisher’s Ghost Art Award, and the Macquarie Group Emerging Artist Prize.