I am an artist based in Stockholm and London. My work often starts with research into social movements and their histories, because what we think we know about the past inevitably shapes what we believe is possible in the future. I am interested in the relationships between gender, power and knowledge. Recently I have, for instance, been collaborating with grassroots women’s organisations on a project about the East London Federation of the Suffragettes, who aimed to establish a model for a new socialist feminist society in one of the poorest areas of the UK. In the resulting artworks, I explore what we can learn today from this early twentieth-century political and educational experiment and some of the problems with how that history has been written. Currently I am working with Glasgow Women's Library, Scotland, on a project Our Bodies are Not the Problem, about feminist health activism. In 2024 I co-curated the exhibition Chronos: Health, Access and Intimacy at Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm, combining feminist and crip perspectives. I work in a range of mediums including: installation, drawing, painting, sound, video and textiles.

I am represented by Maureen Paley, London.

My artworks are in museum collections including the Tate Gallery, UK. I exhibit internationality in museums and biennials including Sharjah Biennial 16, UAE (2025), Gothenburg Biennial, Sweden (2025 & 2017); The School of Creators, Centre Pompidou-Metz, France (2022); 59th October Salon, Belgrade (2022); Amant Foundation, New York (2022); 34th Bienal de São Paulo (2021); Taipei Biennial (2010); Manifesta 8, Murcea (2010); Altermodern: Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London (2009); The Greenroom, Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard, New York (2008); Romantic Detachment, MoMA PS1, New York (2004). I also work in the field of public art. I was awarded a PhD from Lund University, Sweden in 2024 and I am artist research fellow at the Centre for Biomedicine Self and Society at Edinburgh University.

This is the exhibition's strength: how it portrays the ways in which society is based on an acceptance that some bodies should have the opportunity to move forward more unimpeded than others. —Milou Allerholm on ‘Chronos: health, access and intimacy’, Dagens Nyheter, 8 May 2024

In the grim context of our present moment, Plender’s research into feminist histories fit to be celebrated and calls to self-organise feel shockingly radical and urgent. —Hettie Judah, Frieze, September 2022

‘Rethinking History’, Olivia Plender interviewed by Laura Guy, Art Monthly No. 460, October 2022

Plender’s practice is consistently questioning, sensitive, and politically vital.
—Tom Jeffreys, e-flux Criticism, November 2022