Olivia Shahla Bevan is a South African artist and educator, currently completing her MA Fine Art/Printmaking at Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, graduating in September 2024. She has worked as an artist and teacher of Visual Arts in Cape Town, South Africa and is now focused on developing her own artistic practice and contributing to the visual culture resources in Cambridge, as well as collaborating with local cultural institutions such as Cambridge Visual Culture.
Her artistic practice is interested in human connections to and subjective experiences of place, specifically encounters within the natural landscape. The foremost inspiration for her work comes from the natural landscapes that she grew up experiencing – the mountains and seascapes from Cape Town, and their various fauna and flora. Through her artistic practice, she endeavours to (re)explore, (re)interpret and (re)imagine these experiences of place through colour and mark making, working across expanded printmaking and painting.
Olivia is interested in fostering connections with the local cultural community and important cultural institutions in Cambridge. She aspires to combine her professional art and education practices in community-based projects and develop creative and meaningful collaborations alongside these institutions to engage the wider community in creative practices.
