Andy Allen-Olivar (b.1995) was born in Bogotá, Colombia, raised in Oxford, England and in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Most recently, he has exhibited a solo show “Solkatt’ in Konstakademien [2026], and ‘Unfortunate Trout’ in a group show in Fotografiska [2025] and will show at Konstepedimin and in the Geological museum of CDMX. He studied a Post-Master’s in Decolonizing Architecture at KKH (2023–2024), an MFA in Fine Art at Konstfack, Stockholm (2020–2022), a BA in Fine Art at Chelsea School of Art, London (2015), a BA in Fine Art Photography at Akademin Valand, Gothenburg (2016–2017), and Documentary Filmmaking at Biskops Arnö Folkhögskola, Sweden (2018–2020). He lives and works in Stockholm.
Andy Allen-Olivar is a multimedia artist working across photography, film, installation, text and, more recently, performance.
His artistic practice unfolds through optics and illumination: darkrooms, lightboxes, camera obscuras and dia-slide shows. Light is not solely a visual phenomenon, but a way of seeing — a means of perceiving the overlooked, the layered and the accumulated details of memory and meaning. His work attends to the anecdotal and the buried, to ghosts and traces, using text as a form of ventriloquism and imagery as a means of finding what remains hidden or partially illuminated.
Through these processes, he explores feelings of ephemerality and presence, assembling constellations of details that are personal, historical, observed, speculative or overheard. Individually, these fragments can be difficult to articulate; brought together, they begin to suggest something that might be defined, though he feels that something would be lost in the attempt. While photography is his most familiar medium, he is interested in working against its limits, drawing out sentiments that resist being photographed. Text and performance extend this inquiry, allowing language to become a sculptural element within the work — something that takes shape through its use and exists ephemerally on the tongue.
His work is dedicated to scientists and hoarders, and to those who bend their knees to see; to diggers and explorers; to what is written on the backs of things, and to what remains unwritten; to unelaborated memories and pasts that somehow rhyme with them, including those that are not necessarily one's own. It is dedicated to language and ventriloquism, to traces and rituals, to shortcomings and places transformed by time; to hangovers and jet lag; to constructivist anthropology, parallel presents and slow magic. It is dedicated to the flavour and vividness of trying for a long time; to the thing that is missing, and to what defines its absence; to saving things for later; to the familiar, the unconnected and the out of reach. To myth and proof; to knowing how something works and still being surprised and humbled by it; to holding something up to the light and feeling the gravity in one's feet.
Previously, he worked in the postal industry.