Meet Olivia Laing at Bozar on 21 October
1. Olivia Laing knows how to say no
By the age of twenty, saying no had become an art for Olivia Laing, having renounced university, meat, milk and even hairdressers, relentlessly protesting against everything shaped by humans. Naturalness was ‘their religion’. So much so that Olivia Laing spent three months on an abandoned farm, an experience they later described as formative, offering them lessons that university could never have taught them.
2. Olivia Laing cannot be pigeonholed
Not only is Olivia Laing non-binary, their work eludes all attempts at classification. Their most outstanding works – translated into twenty-one languages – include: The Lonely City (2016), an exploration of loneliness through the lives of artists such as Andy Warhol and Edward Hopper; The Trip to Echo Spring (2013) looks at the destructive relationship between great writers (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Carver) and alcoholism; Everybody: A Book About Freedom (2021) questions the way in which our bodies, particularly those of marginalised people, are politicised and controlled.
Olivia Laing also writes about art, culture and society for publications such as The Guardian, Financial Times and The New York Times. Their lyrical language, a blend of emotion and analysis, imagination and factual rigour, seeks to capture the inevitable contradictions of modern experience.
"I think a kind of tenderness and acceptance around people making mistakes is really crucial."
3. Olivia Laing dreams of a new Eden
For Olivia Laing, gardens are places of privilege, but also spaces for collective dreams. From the queer utopia evoked by Derek Jarman on the beach at Dungeness to William Morris’s vision of a common Eden, a new paradise could look like this: “A buzzing, vibrant harmony that transcends not only sexual desire, but the human world itself. Call it a garden state: an interspecies ecology of astounding beauty and fullness, never static, always in motion, progressive and prolific. I want to live there, and the world won’t survive much longer if we don’t.”
4. Olivia Laing promotes tenderness
Every gardener knows that the unpredictability of the garden makes us all enthusiasts. Olivia Laing emphasises the importance of mistakes and learning in their personal and creative journey. In an interview with The Nation, Olivia Laing talks about our times, marked by a growing intolerance of failure and imperfection. It’s in the learning process, which is often humiliating, that we learn to accept others and let go of our own selfishness: “If we want to change the world, we’re going to make a lot of mistakes.”
5. Olivia Laing wants to change the world with bodies
At the age of 9, Olivia Laing took part in their first Pride Parade. Walking and being proud of their body is very important to Olivia, who grew up in the 1980s in England, when British law prohibited the ‘promotion of homosexuality’. “It seemed obvious to me that you change the world with bodies in the street,” reads Everybody, A Book About Freedom (Picador).
Olivia Laing will be at Bozar on 21 October. Book your tickets here.
