“I make environments that resonate with the experience of migration and cultural memory. My site-responsive installations and performances are rooted in the essence and history of a place and negotiate personal, cultural, and environmental concerns. I explore resilience, healing, and hope through humble materials and accumulated labor.
Beili Liu is a visual artist who creates material-and-process-driven, site-responsive installations and performances. Liu’s current research focus 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, 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; 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 Arctic Chair, Norway, a Fulbright Distinguished Chairs Award (2021-2022), the Fulbright Finland Inter-Country Grant (2022), the Brian Wall Grant for Sculptors (2022), NYFA Fiscal Sponsorship (2021-2024), Bessie Honoree for Outstanding Visual Design (2020), for Liu’s stage installation at the Lincoln Center, NYC, a New York Times Critic’s Pick (2019), 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 residencies including the Ucross Foundation (2024); Hafnarborg Museum of Art, Iceland (2024); the Arctic Circle Artist Residency, Svalbard, Norway (2023); the Spitsbergen Artists Center, Longyearbyen, High Arctic Norway(2023); Anchorage Museum of Art (2023), Woodside, CA (2022, 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); Djerassi Foundation, 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 an Institute for the Humanities Fellow (2020-2022) and 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). Liu’s teaching has been endorsed by a UT Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award (2011), selected across the nine institutions of the University of Texas System.
刘北立是一个综合媒体艺术家. 她以时间及过程为本质的装置艺术注研于文化的特性与重叠，瞬时或持久，冲突及融合。针， 剪，线，纸， 香，木，盐，水。这些简单的物质是刘北立以不倦的手工创造微妙亦寓意深刻的微观世界的工具。 通过这些日常材料，刘转化它们的内在和平凡的质感来演绎更为深复的文化叙事。 美国艺术 Art in America资深评论家Janet Kaplos 称誉刘北立的作品为：“物质简单但隐喻丰富”.
刘北立的艺术作品在国际上广泛展出，包括挪威、芬兰、英国、德国、法国，意大利、西班牙、立陶宛、中国、波兰、台湾及美国各地。刘北立2002年至今已举办四十余个展，包括挪威国家艺术文化中心 “Hå gamle prestegard”, 上海 “博雅姗”艺术中心, 柏林亚洲无限画廊，德国慕尼黑 Galerie An Der Pinakothek Der Moderne展馆，英国伦敦HUA展馆, Crow亚洲艺术馆，旧金山中华文化基金会展馆。 刘的作品入选多个联展，包括美国国立女艺术家博物馆，新奥尔良美术馆，圣克鲁斯艺术和历史博物馆，奥斯汀现代艺术馆, 城市当代艺术中心， 芬兰Fiskars市“Granary”画廊，立陶宛国家艺术博物馆主办的KAUNAS Biennial－2011年国际当代纤维艺术双年展，杭州纤维艺术三年展，德国汉堡艺术周, 意大利COMO城ARTE&ARTE基金会举办的23届和25届MINIARTEXTIL国际纤维年展。
她的艺术作品在多种重要期刊上得到评论, 包括美国艺术杂志 Art in America，雕塑杂志 Sculpture Magazine, 纽约时报 New York TImes，华尔街时报 Wall Street Journal， 英国Sacchi 评论, 芬兰赫尔辛基 Sanomat 新闻， 挪威斯塔万格新闻，中国日报，现代中国艺术杂志，中国艺术当代， 澳大利亚 陶艺感知杂志，汉堡Abendblatt ，意大利Vita（Life）杂志，ArtSlant ，赫芬顿邮报，旧金山观感Examiner和洛杉矶Confidential等。
刘北立荣获多种艺术研究奖项，包括安德鲁卡耐基奖 （Andrew Carnegie Fellowship， 2022-2024), 波洛克创作奖 (Pollock Prize for Creativity, 2022), 布莱恩沃尔雕塑奖 (2022)。她代表首位艺术家荣获富布赖特北极主席杰出学者奖(Fulbright Distinguishied Arctic Chair，2021-2022)在北极进行了深入的环境人文研究。其他奖项包括德乔安.米歇尔Joan mitchell绘画雕塑奖金(2016)，德克萨斯州立三维艺术家(2018), 美国国家艺术基金会 National Endowment of the Arts 奖金 (2014), 和劳森伯格 Robert Rauschenberg 基金会艺术创新和合作基金(2013)。2011年，刘荣获立陶宛KAUNAS 国际当代纤维艺术双年展卓越奖。她的个展《之间》被英国Sacchi评论誉为2009年上海十大杰出展览之一 。刘北立被授予2008年旧金山市长将，以赞励她对中美文化交流的贡献。2015-2022年间，刘北立与著名舞蹈艺术家杨丽萍合作，将她的代表作《补缮工程》剪刀艺术装置创意搬上了享誉世界的舞蹈剧《十面埋伏》的舞台。
刘北立出生于中国吉林，获密歇根大学安娜堡校艺术硕士学位，现任德克萨斯大学奥斯汀校Leslie Waggener Endowed Professorship冠名正教授。