I am an art historian based at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, whose research and writing on creative practices from the 1960s to the contemporary moment explores art’s relationships with a variety of political formulations, with particular interests including intersectional feminisms, internationalism and transnationalism, technologies of mediation, abstraction and photography. This research has focused on artistic projects in the Americas and the Caribbean, and Europe, and has also informed exhibition projects, including Life Support: Forms of Care in Art and Activism at Glasgow Women’s Library in 2021. Alongside academic research, I also regularly write art criticism, and my exhibition reviews and shorter pieces of writing have appeared in Artforum International, Art Monthly, Art in the Public Sphere, Burlington Contemporary, Burlington Magazine, and MAP Magazine.

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Olivia Plender, Our Bodies Are Not the Problem, the Problem is Power, 2021, installation photograph from Life Support: Forms of Care in Art and Activism, Glasgow Women’s Library, 2021. Photo: Neil Hanna.