About the Artist
Olivia Levins Holden (she/her & they/them) is a queer, mixed Boricua muralist, organizer, artist and arts educator, born and living on Dakota land in Minneapolis. She devotes much of her time to facilitating community murals and developing her studio practice. Her work translates community conversations and people's history into collaborative public art, explores healing through expression of complexity, justice and healing, and her own experience of multiple identities, lineages, languages, and places. She strives to explore many ways the arts can tell our stories, plant seeds, combat toxic narratives and decolonize through truth-telling.
About the Artwork
No Se Vende: "This piece is in response to the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the Caribbean in fall of 2017. As with many natural disasters, much of the lasting impact is a direct result of the “unnatural” conditions that preceded the storm--colonization, systemic racism, and capitalist greed among others. This art in defense of Puerto Rico, the island of my father’s birth, is in honor of those movements and efforts (historical and current) resisting harm, and building transformational, creative, medicinal, and collective ways to survive and thrive. Puerto Rico No Se Vende, Puerto Rico Se Defiende : Puerto Rico is Not For Sale, Puerto Rico Will Defend Herself."