Overview
'There is lifeblood in process, in labour – the juice, the sweat and tears – all of it is in the making.'
From 2005 until 2020, Lou worked in Durban where she founded an art studio with women who were skilled in the craft of traditional beadwork. From this symbiotic exchange of technical mastery between artist and atelier sprang works which combined the dailiness of traditional rural life with the austerity of Minimalism in a series of woven paintings, sculptures and monumentally scaled installations. Following her relocation to the Mojave desert in Southern California, Lou returned to a solitary way of working and rediscovered her own individual mark, along with a focus upon colour as both subject and object. The material focus of her practice expanded to incorporate drawing and painting, while remaining committed to the bead as the generative cell of her art.
Liza Lou was born in New York in 1969. She first came to prominence in 1996, when her room-sized beaded sculpture Kitchen was shown at the New Museum, New York. This groundbreaking work, now in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, represented five years of solitary labour and established the principles of materiality and social consciousness that would come to define her practice. It was followed by Back Yard (1996-99), now in the collection of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, and Trailer (1998-2000), also life-size, which was acquired by the Brooklyn Museum, New York in 2023, where it is on permanent display in their entry pavilion.
From 2005 until 2020, Lou worked in Durban where she founded an art studio with women who were skilled in the craft of traditional beadwork. From this symbiotic exchange of technical mastery between artist and atelier sprang works which combined the dailiness of traditional rural life with the austerity of Minimalism in a series of woven paintings, sculptures and monumentally scaled installations. Following her relocation to the Mojave desert in Southern California, Lou returned to a solitary way of working and rediscovered her own individual mark, along with a focus upon colour as both subject and object. The material focus of her practice expanded to incorporate drawing and painting, while remaining committed to the bead as the generative cell of her art.
Lou's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at institutions including the Brooklyn Museum, New York (2024); Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase (2015); Museum of Contemporary Arts San Diego (2013); Savannah College of Art and Design (2011); Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (2002); The Bass Museum of Art, Miami (1998); and Aspen Art Museum (1998). Notable recent group exhibitions include the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2025); PODO Museum, Jeju Island (2025); UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art (2024); National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2023); 21st Biennale of Sydney (2018); and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2010).
Lou's work is held in a number of public collections, including the Buffalo AKG Art Museum; Cleveland Museum of Art; Des Moines Art Center; Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris; Pinault Collection, Paris; Palazzo Grassi, Venice; Hill Art Foundation, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); Fundación Jumex Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; and National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Lou is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2002), and in 2022 Rizzoli Electa published their second comprehensive monograph on the artist's work.
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