MOA has partnered with local artist, Olive Moya to feature a few of her artworks at our Englewood location. One of the works featured is new, large-scale 85-linear foot mural, titled [Mouthing Words], in our atrium gallery at the Englewood Civic Center. The mural is painted on the walls and also featured on the MOA entry doors. This mural will be on view throughout 2021 and is free and open during regular civic center building hours.

In addition to the atrium mural, Moya’s artwork titled No New Stars (Denver 1910 -1920), will be featured on MOA’s outdoor billboard on the east side of the Englewood Civic Center for the duration of 2021.

More information about Olive’s artwork can be found below.

Mural Title: [Mouthing Words]
Artist: Olive Moya
Year: 2021
Materials: Acrylic

Artist Statement

The bold graphic colorscapes, defined edges, line-work and movement are referential of Moya’s background in illustration and lettering. She most recently describes her paintings as “abstract storytelling,” influenced by how Frank Stella described his own work, saying: “[Abstraction] could have a geometry that had a narrative impact. In other words, you could tell a story with the shapes.”   Each of Moya’s works are a push and pull between intuition and control. It is a performance by and for the artist, reflecting identity back on oneself to simulate comfort and stability in the face of fear and loss of control.

Moya pairs the soft consoling colors of her childhood with the vivid influence of her early-adulthood in Los Angeles. The pale turquoise of the wallpaper in her childhood kitchen, or the faded nostalgic hues of Disney films on VCR against saturated primaries, striking yellow-greens and hot pinks.  Cloud-like organic shapes float across her panels, clustering around each other and are sometimes interrupted by sharp black pathways referential of Keith Haring and of Cy Twombly’s blackboard drawings. Each pair of black lines can be twisted and angry, slow and methodical, meandering, decisive, or stuttering- all layering atop each other and the dreamlike colorful background. Some pieces exist only as vivid pathways tangled, layered, and overwhelming.  The work often incorporates one or more clean shifts, giving the impression of a changing timeline, comic strip or storyboard. Each piece can be the portrayal of a single moment, or a recounting of a transformation over years.

The titles of the paintings are gathered from various movie subtitle descriptions. Each title suggests that there is something in the work that the viewer has not heard or noticed and therefore overlooked. Furthermore, pulling from subtitles represents a chain of carefully curated versions of a story- the theatrics of the music, background noise, and non-dialogue character sounds that construct a specific understanding of what is being viewed. Moya pairs these sometimes humorous decontextualized parenthetical phrases such as  “Rustling Continues” and “Slurping Loudly” with her pieces in an attempt to discuss our relationship with our own perceived identity. Often, we quickly we simultaneously neglect the truths of fear, failure, sadness and rejection and then fill it in idly in an attempt to comfort and control. The titles are also a nod to the artist’s relationship to humor in language, lettering, and text.