The Olympia Project is a semi-nomadic (and increasingly virtual) project space and exhibition platform for contemporary art, dedicated to supporting the careers of emerging artists and curators.

Founded in 2018 by independent curator Sophie Olympia Riese, The Olympia Project is a platform for unrepresented emerging contemporary art, focusing on socially-engaged practices to create alternative cultural discourse and progressive exchanges between diverse artists and audiences, with a goal of broadening audiences and increasing access to and within the art world, providing opportunities to artists who are early career or emerging, typically from underrepresented or marginalized groups.

Our principles are: 

• To serve as a platform from which unknown or unrepresented artists and curators can launch their careers

• To welcome emerging, established, or experimental practices

• To foster an open and flexible approach to art, and an environment for learning and appreciating that is open and comfortable for all

• To create a global community

• To address the historical inequities in the art market, by representing and working with artists who identify as minority, female, queer, gender non-conforming, or other historically underrepresented groups

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The Olympia Project has received grant and program support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Chashama, NYU's Wagner School, Assembly Room, and ArtFare. Artists we support have gone on to be included in exhibitions at MoMA P.S.1 and Fotografiska, and to be represented by galleries such as Fridman Gallery in New York.

Prior to founding The Olympia Project, Riese was a founding member and curator at SECRET DUNGEON (2016-2018) in Brooklyn, NY. She is a trustee of the International Studio & Curatorial Program, and founding member of the Brooklyn Museum's Young Leadership Council.