Biography
Jen Liu is a visual artist based in New York, working in video, choreographic performance, biomaterial, and painting to explore topics of national identity, gendered economies, neoliberal industrial labor, and the re-motivating of archival artifacts. Problem-solving methods are applied to complex social issues, then permitted to progress to their logical conclusions, create speculative narratives seemingly beyond reason – revealing elements of false consciousness and the limitations of existing solutions. Historical materialism across cultural types is embodied in everyday administrative and industry texts, while props, costumes, and animation take tropes to their ridiculous extreme.
She is a 2019 recipient of the Creative Capital Award, 2018 LACMA Art + Technology Lab grant, and 2017 Guggenheim Fellowship in Film/Video, 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Digital/Electronic Art. She has presented work at The Whitney Museum, MoMA, and The New Museum, New York; Royal Academy and ICA in London; Kunsthaus Zurich; Kunsthalle Wien; the Aspen Museum of Art; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; MUSAC, Leon; as well as the 2014 Shanghai Biennale and UCCA Beijing. She has received multiple grants and residencies, including Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany; Sommerakademie, Bern, Switzerland; de ateliers, Amsterdam, NL; and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York, among others. In 2016 she was a resident artist at Para Site in Hong Kong and LMCC Process Space on Roosevelt Island, in 2018-19 she was a resident artist at Pioneer Works, Brooklyn, and in 2019 she was a Swatch Artist in Residence in Shanghai.