Trinidad-born, Chicago-based artist Sherwin Ovid works across painting and mixed media to explore themes of migration, memory, and material transformation. His layered works combine pigment, resin, and found substances such as dirt and fabric, reflecting on cultural transmission and the intersections of visibility, movement, and belonging. 

In this conversation with Marissa Baker, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History and curator of Ovid’s exhibition at the UIS Visual Arts Gallery, the two will discuss his process, influences, and the personal and historical narratives that shape his practice. As images of his work are projected, Ovid will share insights into how his materials and methods embody fluidity and hybridity, and how abstraction can hold lived experience. Together, their dialogue will offer a greater understanding of how art can visualize migration, identity, and reconstruction within the diasporic experience.

Sherwin Ovid is a visual artist born in Trinidad that earned his Bachelor’s degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was a Lincoln Fellow in 2013 at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he received his MFA. He currently teaches as an Assistant professor at Northwestern University and University of Illinois at Chicago. His commercial endeavors include collaborations with Lee Daniel’s Netflix feature The Deliverance, Lena Waithe’s Showtime drama The Chi, and Jordan Peele’s Monkey Paw Studio remake of Candyman directed by Nia DaCosta. Ovid has exhibited extensively; he was published in New American Painters in 2016 and 2021 as a noteworthy feature and in 2020 listed as one of New City Magazine’s breakout artist.