Beili Liu

Artist Statement / Bio

Beili Liu is a visual artist who creates material-and-process-driven, site-responsive installations and performances. Liu’s current research focuses on environmental concerns and the urgency of the climate crisis on a planetary scale. 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, the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Lithuania, France, Belgium, Poland, Mexico, 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 include the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts Houston; 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, and internationally, the 2026 Chengdu Biennale at the Chengdu Art Museum, China; the 2016 Hangzhou Fiber Art Triennale at the Zhejiang Museum of Art, China; Hexiangning Museum of Art, Shenzhen, China; the Hamburg Art Week, Germany; M.K. Ciurlionis National Art Museum, Kaunas, Lithuania; 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; Singapore; Bremerhaven, Germany; Taiwan; San Francisco, CA; Charlotte, NC; 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, Norway, (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.

Artist Social

• Instagram: @beililiu