Olive Martin was born in Liège, Belgium in 1972 to French parents, Agnès and Jean. She was raised by her mother and the father of her younger sister, Jacques, who shared his taste for contemporary art with her. In her work she inflects identity, its disguises and deviations, and in her photographs and installations pursues the idea of “some sort of singularity”. In 2005, she co-authored a book entitled Common Objects with the American writer April Durham, which was published by Joca Seria in Nantes, France.