Olivia Luz Perillo (b. 1993, Lafayette, Louisiana) is an American multidisciplinary visual artist of Mexican and Italian descent whose work is rooted in her cultural and familial identity. Her practice spans documentary and experimental photography, film, collage, and ancestral archival methodologies, exploring cultural storytelling, regional music, social justice, and ancestral healing in dialogue with the natural world. She centers her photography and collages on the interconnected landscapes of her homelands in South Louisiana and the American Southwest, drawing on the histories, migrations, and layered identities of these regions.

Moving between ethnographic sensitivity and poetic image-making, Perillo approaches her work as a form of visual anthropology — one that attends to memory, land, and the internal spirit as living archives. While composing her images across mediums to create atmospheric visual narratives that, at times, blur distinctions between documentation and dreamscape through color and composition, she reflects on her own place within these intertwined histories in the ongoing pursuit of collective healing. Her images, often saturated with the muted, meditative tones of dusk, function as reflective portals where personal and collective histories merge. Within these spaces, a spiritual presence resonates across time, offering glimpses of history, lineage, and lived experience. Through subtle manipulations of color, light, and composition, her work creates a suspended atmosphere in which viewers are invited into introspection and quiet contemplation — a space to engage with both the emotional resonance of place and the mirrors of self.

In 2018, she co-founded her production company, Honest Art, with Syd Horn following the creation of their short film Migration. Their first feature, Intention (2020), was supported by the CREATELouisiana French Culture Film Grant and the Panavision New Filmmaker Program, and was broadcast on TV5Monde across Francophone regions, in addition to the thirteen countries her film work has screened. Since then, Perillo has contributed as director, producer, cinematographer, editor, colorist, and graphic designer across a diverse range of projects, spanning documentary and music video formats through 2026. Her photography has appeared internationally — in Louisiana, Paris, Tokyo, and Cairo — and has been published by CHANEL, Mariner Books, Rolling Stone France, The Marshall Project with The New York Times, as well as in regional publications including The Current, Lafayette Travel, Country Roads Magazine, Acadiana Profile Magazine, and Acadiana Lifestyle Magazine. In 2025, her evocative swamp cinematography served as the backdrop for Lana Del Rey’s UK and Ireland stadium tour, debuting at Stagecoach Festival in California.

Perillo has exhibited in group shows across Louisiana, Texas, and Arizona, including solo exhibitions at Gallery R and the Jean Lafitte Acadian Cultural Center under the National Park Service in Lafayette, Louisiana. She serves on the board of the Louisiana Trust for Historic Preservation, representing St. Landry Parish, where she resides.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS:

2026: Hilliard Art Museum (Lafayette, LA) - Gulf Streams: Atchafalaya Remixed - 333 / Returning, experimental short film
2026: NUNU Arts & Culture Collective (Arnaudville, LA) - Refuge: The Courage to Witness - Oasis, digital ancestral collage on metal
2025: Wild Child Wine Shop (Lafayette, LA) - Aurora, St. Landry Parish, digital photograph on metal + 22 various prints
2025: Acadiana Center for the Arts (Lafayette, LA) - Prairie Stories: Art and Ecological Restoration on Louisiana’s Prairies - collaborative work with Rush Jagoe, experimental short film (editor)
2024: Acadiana Center for the Arts (Lafayette, LA) - Last Man Out of Babylon, Dege Legg Tribute - DEGE feature documentary (director, editor), printed photographs, physical relics
2023: Acadiana Center for the Arts (Lafayette, LA) - Acadiana Open Studio - Solar Swamp Eclipse, double exposure photograph on metal
2022: Staple Goods (New Orleans, LA) - Cosmic Lands, Cosmik Folk - Venusiana, digital collage on metal + Bruisey Peets Poached Eggs, photograph on metal
2021: Teche Center for the Arts (Breaux Bridge, LA) - Wild Trees II - assistant curator - Among Swamp + Desert, eight digital collages on metal

AWARDS:

2025: Best Louisiana Film, 20th Cinema on the Bayou Film Festival - co-directing + editing + coloring + graphic design, Across the Quiet
2023: Louisiana Film Prize - coloring, The Candy Lady
2023: Get Ready Grant from The Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge
2023: ArtSpark Grant from the Acadiana Center for the Arts and Lafayette Economic Development Authority - post-production, Boscoyo Fleaux
2023: ArtSpark Grant from the Acadiana Center for the Arts and Lafayette Economic Development Authority - producing, Traitement
2019: Panavision New Filmmaker’s Grant - co-directing + producing, Intention
2019: CREATELouisiana French Culture Film Grant - co-directing + producing, Intention