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 musical traditions, social justice, and ancestral healing in dialogue with the natural world. She centers her work 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 art as a form of visual anthropology — a practice that attends to memory, land, and community as living archives, while reflecting on her own place within these intertwined histories and the ongoing pursuit of collective healing.

Working between the surreal and the tangible, Perillo composes visual narratives that blur the boundaries between documentation and dreamscape. Her images, often saturated with the muted, meditative tones of dusk, function as reflective portals where personal and collective histories merge. Within these spaces, the spiritual presence of ancestral landscapes resonates across time, offering glimpses of memory, 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 the women-led production company Honest Art with Syd Horn, following the creation of their short film Migration. Their first feature, Intention, 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, Rolling Stone France, The New York Times, HarperCollins with Mariner Books, as well as 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.

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