Beili Liu is a prolific artist, whose practice is characterized by an uncommon, deeply intelligent creativity. Her distinctive practice continues to evolve, as reflected in the differentness of each artistic investigation she undertakes. She makes beautiful, poetic, and sometimes haunting work that serves to engage with, as well as reflect on, the materiality of objects and the elasticity of meaning that her singular practice evokes and animates. This publication both chronicles and celebrates the wonderful trajectory of her practice and bears witness to the continued maturing of an artist whose work grows ever more nuanced and confident in its expression. Now, after many years as a professional artist it’s possible for us to identify the main concerns of her practice. “For over two decades, Beili Liu has been making spatial compositions that examine themes of migration, cultural memory, labor, social and environmental concerns.” These concerns, individually or collectively have been discernible features of her sculptural practices over many years, resulting in multiple bodies of profound work. Increasingly, Liu’s work is informed by ecological matters, given poignant relevance on account of the international locations in which she has, particularly of late, undertaken residences and mounted exhibitions.
In the fall of 2013, Liu completed an extraordinary public art project. Titled Thirst, the installation in question saw Liu collaborating with a wide range of partners in the realizing and successful completion of the artwork. Thirst was a particularly dramatic and engaging piece of work, consisting, as it did, of a ghost-like Cedar Elm tree (a species native to Texas) – dead from dehydration – painted white, its roots and all, and positioned (with the aid of a vertical pole going up into its trunk) a meter or two above the water level of the Lady Bird lake in downtown Austin, in what was at the time a particularly dehydrated Texas…
Thirst was a singular, dramatic and sobering installation. Its imposing and impactful elements made more so by the frugality, or apparent simplicity of the work, and the eerie, otherworldly ways in which it was lit, after nightfall. This orienting of her practice towards environmental matters has become a constant and it manifests itself in wonderfully engaging ways. Liu is an artist whose practice is characterized, as much as anything else, by its investigations into materiality. There is a particularly tactile aspect to the ways in which we look at or contemplate the work of this fascinating artist and the visually charged work she makes.
… Thread is of course both a noun and a verb. As much as thread might be a long, thin strand of cotton, nylon, or other fibers used in sewing or weaving, it’s also a theme or characteristic, typically forming one of several, running throughout a situation or, in Liu’s instance, an installation. In Where Winds Are Gaining Speed, we see thread utilized in relation to stone, “linked together, locked in an impossible unity – disparate yet inseparable.” And in The Mending Project we saw thread utilized to equally dramatic effect. The gallery installation consisted of hundreds of pairs of Chinese-manufactured scissors ominously suspended from the ceiling, by means of near-invisible nylon thread, the points of the scissors facing downwards. The piece evoked the terrifying and diabolical spectacle of potential violence and pain, inflicted, from any given part of the mass of scissors, at any given time, upon any living soul who ventured beneath. And yet, the work was in many respects a defiant and affirmative piece that spoke of a beautiful resistance to looming terror or violence. Seated beneath the hovering mass of potential violence was Liu herself, quietly working at a table, embarked on an act of mending – the sewing together of pieces of fabric that had been cut from a nearby sheet of cloth by gallery visitors and placed on the table at which the artist worked. Though violence, or at least, the potential of violence loomed overhead, Liu sat, patiently and with great poise, making her own beautiful patchwork that spoke of quiet but confidence resistance, affirmation and creativity, in an environment that might otherwise evoke fear. The work could be read as symbolizing the majestic power of the human spirit to resist a climate or environment of violence, in the most profound and beautiful of ways.
The above extracts are from "The Threads Within Beili Liu's Work", the Introduction (pages 53-55) to Beili Liu: Mend, a monograph published in conjunction with the 2024 Texas Artist of the Year exhibition at Art League Houston, Rising Water, (September 13 - November 24, 2024). Following the Introduction, the monograph featured texts by Annette DiMeo Carlozzi, Bridget Bray, Katie Pfohl, Kay Whitney and Benjamin Hickey.