Liza Lou (b. 1969, New York; lives and works in Los Angeles) first gained attention in 1996 when her room-sized sculpture Kitchen was shown at the New Museum in New York. Representing five years of individual labor, this groundbreaking work subverted prevalent standards of art by introducing glass beads as a fine art material. Through its slow, hand-made process, Kitchen became a monument to women whose labor has historically gone unrecognized. The project blurred the rigid boundary between fine art and craft, and established Lou’s long-standing exploration of materiality, beauty, and the valorization of labor. Working within a craft métier has led the artist to work in a variety of socially engaged settings, from community groups in Los Angeles, to a collective she founded in Durban, South Africa in 2005, to a bead embroidery collective in Mumbai, India and a women’s prison in Belém, Brazil. Over the past 15 years, Lou has focused on a poetic approach to abstraction as a way to highlight the process underlying the work. In addition to using the natural variations of color caused by the natural oils of the human hand as a form of tonal mark-making, the artist applies layers of paint, scraping and wiping it across bead-woven cloths, which she then carves into with a hammer in order to reveal the delicate network of thread hidden inside the beads.
Lou continues to work in South Africa and Los Angeles and is currently developing a major artwork and sustainable employment project within a women’s prison in Belém, Brazil, and a women’s project in Mumbai, India.
麗莎·露(1969年生於美國紐約 ,現於洛杉磯和南非誇祖魯納塔爾省工作及生活)1996年在紐約新當代藝術博物館展出了一比一大小的廚房雕塑作品,引起關注。她開創先河,利用玻璃小彩珠作為雕塑的原材料。通過其緩慢的手工制作過程,廚房成為女性的紀念碑,代表著女性勞工在歷史上一直被忽視。該項目確立了她對物質、社會實踐和監禁的探索。
2005年,露移居至南非的誇祖魯.納塔爾省,她在省內聘請一群精通珠飾傳統工藝的祖魯族女性,共同協作「Security Fence」(2005)的大型雕塑。藝術家與祖魯族女匠一同工作,重新思考在非西方的歷史和社會學框架中實踐藝術,並強調以材料和勞動為主要題材。在過去的十年中,露專註於極簡主義的調色,利用由手汗、油和瑕疵引起的顏色的自然變化作為色調標記制作方式。在她的單色、像素化、編織的「繪畫」中,有玻璃珠微妙的變化和條紋,在作品創作的重覆和無形過程之下,展現人性和美感。
露繼續在南非和洛杉磯工作,目前正在巴西貝倫的一所女子監獄內開展一項重要的藝術作品和可持續就業項目。