Dolls, 2020
In her video Dolls, Olive performs a piece where she sees herself in a very different light from usual. She plays a version of herself that fulfills what the world wants her to be as a woman if she’s expected to be successful. She portrays the women who must climb over others to have a place in the world. She forces upon a happy face in the midst of moral dilemma and continues to do what she must to get through. The repetition in the piece drills home the idea of a seeming never-ending cycle of cruelty and allows the viewer to sit within that and find how they feel about it.
Expectations, 2020
In her video Expectations, Olive explores her personal experiences in having labels thrust upon herself. She takes the expectations the world has put upon her and those she has given herself and embodies them as she experiences her space. She looks at how her body must live within the labels student, feminine, gay and sexual. Through voice over Olive portrays the role her own self talk when it comes to these subjects. She talks honestly about how her mind tells her to see herself. Through movement she shows how she acts on this self talk, how she experiences it through her actions. She explores the places her mind travels when left only with expectations.
Laura Olive is a multidisciplinary artist currently studying Media Arts in her second year at the Alberta University of the Arts. Along with this, Olive is also participating in the Hear/d Residency. Although her practice is primarily focused in technology, she also works with fibre, drawing and performance art. Her work primarily hinges on personal experience, often talking about her body, mental health, sexuality, and the places those fit within the world. She tries to reinterpret these topics within a new lens, finding aesthetically pleasing or comedic ways to interpret often taboo and/or dark topics.