Beili liu

2024 Texas Artist of the Year

Beili Liu in Conversation with Bridget Bray - Saturday, September 14, at 2 PM

Rising Water is a compilation of works created by ALH’s 2024 Texas Artist of the Year, Beili Liu, across diverse global locations. Each piece is crafted to draw viewers in with the intricate beauty of Liu’s technique while simultaneously confronting them with the stark realities of climate change. Liu’s practice explores how climate issues intersect with labor, migration, and social concerns, weaving these themes into a cohesive narrative that reflects the complexity of our global environmental crisis.

Each artwork in the exhibition is intimately connected to the specific environment in which it was created, reflecting the unique environmental and social issues of that locale. From documenting the deteriorating walls of her studio in the sinking city of Venice to capturing the gathered ocean plastic debris along multiple coastlines, Liu collects intimate evidence of the climate crisis while studying complex ecological and sociopolitical challenges of new environments. Despite these localized inspirations, Liu’s work possesses a profound universality. The themes she addresses resonate beyond their geographic origins, speaking to broader environmental and social challenges that affect communities worldwide.

In Houston, a city that has experienced a notable increase in the frequency and intensity of natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods, Liu’s work takes on additional layers of meaning. The exhibition’s exploration of climate-induced displacement and environmental degradation finds a particularly poignant echo in Houston’s own struggles with these issues. Through her art, Liu not only underscores the global nature of the climate crisis but also invites viewers to reflect on its local impacts and the interconnectedness of our responses to these challenges.

The monograph Beili Liu: Mend, published by Art League Houston and designed by Isobel Chiang of Small Editions, will be released in conjunction with this exhibition. The publication features six essays by Edward Chambers, Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Bridget Bray, Katie Pfohl, Kay Whitney, and Benjamin Hickey.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Beili Liu is a visual artist who creates material-and-process-driven, site-responsive installations and performances. Liu's current research focuses on the complex ecological, political, and environmental concerns facing the Circumpolar North and the urgency of the climate crisis on a planetary scale. Liu states, "I am called to visit the Arctic, a place that embodies the sorrows and hopes of our shared planet." Working with commonplace materials and elements such as thread, needle, scissors, feather, salt, wax, and cement, Liu manipulates their intrinsic qualities to extrapolate complex cultural and environmental narratives. As Kay Whitney wrote about Liu's work in Sculpture Magazine: "Liu's installations leap from obsession and repetition to something profound and expansive, merging the personal with the political...these remarkedly ordinary materials emphasize the disjunctive pairing of subtle beauty and cultural narrative."

Liu has exhibited extensively across the globe, in locations including Norway, Finland, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Lithuania, France, Belgium, Poland, Austria, China, Taiwan and across the United States. She has presented solo exhibitions at Hå Gamle Prestegard, Norwegian National Art and Culture Museum; Galerie An Der Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich, Germany; Museo di Villa Bernasconi, Como, Italy; Elisabeth de Brabant Art Center, Shanghai, China; Chinese Culture Foundation, San Francisco, CA; the Crow Museum of Asian Art, Dallas, TX; Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX; and Women & Their Work, Austin, TX, among others. Significant group exhibitions at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; New Orleans Art Museum, LA; Grand Rapids Museum of Art, MI; Asian Art Week, NYC; Asia Society Texas Center, Houston, TX; Artpace, San Antonio, TX; San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, CA; and internationally at the Hamburg Art Week, Germany; M.K. Ciurlionis National Art Museum, Kaunas, Lithuania; Zhejiang Museum of Art, China; Hexiangning Museum of Art, Shenzhen, China; Musée de la Dentelle in Caudry, Montrouge, France; Asian Art Week, London, UK; and Bunkier Sztuki Gallery, Kraków, Poland. Liu has created public artworks in Beijing, Jilin and Shanghai, China, Bremerhaven, Germany, Taiwan, San Francisco, CA, Dallas and Austin, TX.

Liu has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship (2022-2024); the Pollock Prize for Creativity (2022); the Fulbright Distinguished Arctic Chair Award (Norway, 2021-2022); the Fulbright Finland Inter-Country Grant (2022); the Brian Wall Grant for Sculptors (2022); NYFA Fiscal Sponsorship (2021-2024); the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2016); 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. Liu received the Distinction Award at the Kaunas Biennial, Lithuania (2011), and a San Francisco Mayor’s Award (2008) for her contribution to cultural exchange.

Liu participated in artist residencies at the Hafnarborg Museum of Art, Iceland (2024), Arctic Circle Artists and Scientists Residency, Svalbard, Norway (2023), the Spitsbergen Artists Center, Svalbard, Norway (2023), Seed lab and Polar Lab at the Anchorage Museum of Art, Alaska (2023), the Franconia Sculpture Center, MN (2023), Djerassi Foundation, Woodside, CA (2023, 2006), the Joan Mitchell Center (2019), Studios at MASS MoCA (2019), Facebook Headquarter AIR (2018), Roman Witt Visiting Artist Residency, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2015), Fundación Valparaíso, Spain (2009), Fiskars AIR, Finland (2007), and Art Farm, NE (2004).

Liu’s work has been featured by PBS Arts in Context series, Sculpture Magazine, Art in America, New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, ArtNews, Art Papers, ArtSlant, Artillery, The Huffington Post, Climate Progress, Public Art Review, Sacchi Review, UK, Helsinki Sanomat News, Finland, Morgenbladet, Norway, China Daily, Yishu, Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Hamburg Abendblatt and Vita (Life) Magazine, Italy, among others.

Born in Jilin, China, Beili Liu now lives and works in Austin, Texas. Liu received her MFA degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2003). Liu is the Leslie Waggener Endowed Professor in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Liu served on the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Museum Panel (2019), and her teaching has been endorsed by a UT Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award (2011), selected across the nine institutions of the University of Texas System.

Major funding and support for the exhibition and catalog were generously provided by the Jacques Louis Vidal Charitable Fund, Edaren Foundation, The Levant Foundation, Nancy Allen, Edward R. Allen III & Chinhui Juhn, Jereann Chaney, Benjamin Hickey, and Johanna Brassert & Bill Stewart.