Curatorial Practice > Galvanized Suns

Olivia Mc Gilchrist (she / her) is a white French-Jamaican multimedia artist and researcher exploring how colonial legacies extend their reach to Virtual Reality (VR) technology. Her research-creation PhD project borrows critical tools from Feminist studies, Black studies and Postcolonial Caribbean studies in order to offer a framework for the aesthetic experience of VR immersion figuratively and literally.

Olivia writes of her work: 'In 'X-cosmos-X', I am looking at water and submersion through screen-based technologies, to stimulate a contemplative, immersive experience. Inspired by Barbadian writer and poet Kamau Brathwaite’s notions of ‘tidalectics’ and a ‘Caribbean cosmos’ layers of video and 3D water shaders create a fluid effect, further pushing my explorations in experimental virtual underwater environments which include non-Western spaces. My current research-creation practice also investigates how contemporary iterations of Virtual Reality (VR), within a continuum of screen based and multi-media installation art practices, may trouble postcolonial identities through hybrid representations of human and non-human bodies.'