Beili Liu

Beili Liu is a visual artist who creates site-responsive installations and performances that address themes of migration, cultural memory, labor, and social and environmental concerns. She is the Leslie Waggener Professor in the College of Fine Arts and a Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

Liu has exhibited internationally, including in Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Lithuania, China, Poland, Taiwan, and across the United States. She has had solo exhibitions at, among others, Hå Gamle Prestegard, Norwegian National Art and Culture Museum, Nærbø, Norway; Galerie an der Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany; Museo Villa Bernasconi, Como, Italy; the Chinese Culture Foundation, San Francisco, California; and the Crow Museum of Asian Art, Dallas, Texas. Significant group exhibitions include the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana; Artpace, San Antonio, Texas; and Asian Art Week, New York, New York. Major international group exhibitions include Hamburg Art Week, Hamburg, Germany; M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, Kaunas, Lithuania; Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, China; and Bunkier Sztuki Gallery, Kraków, Poland.

Liu has received support for her artistic research from numerous fellowships and awards, including the Fulbright Arctic Chair Distinguished Scholar Award (2021–22), the Pollock Prize for Creativity (2022), the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2016), and the National Endowment for the Arts Challenge America Grant through the Museum of Southeast Texas (2014). In 2018, Liu was honored by the Texas Legislature as the Texas State Artist in 3D medium.

Her project, “Dreams of the High North: Between Survival and Belonging, Sculptural Exploration of Environmental Challenges Facing the Circumpolar North,” is a sculptural installation and performance series that examines environmental and geopolitical transformations of the Circumpolar North through the lens of labor, handcraft, and the lived experiences of Arctic indigenous people. Utilizing the universal language of visual art as a tool for “translation, transmission, and transformation of cultures,” the series aims to heighten awareness of the human impact on the environment and the urgency of climate change.

Twitter:
@beililiu