Jen Liu works with video, painting, sculpture, biomaterial, and dance performance to speak to issues of diasporic Asian identities, postcolonial economies, speculative feminism, and the remotivating of archival artifacts. Based on her research on existing socioeconomic conditions, Liu creates fabulated narratives which reinterpret contested accounts of the past and present. From 2016 to 2023, Liu worked on Pink Slime Caesar Shift, a multifaceted project that proposes new tools for communication through biological encryption. In recent works, Liu explores the impact of technological advancements on labor and the environment.
Liu’s solo exhibitions were held at Blindspot Gallery (Hong Kong, 2024), / (Slash) (San Francisco, 2024), Cornell Tech (New York, 2022), ARIEL Platform for Feminist Art (Copenhagen, 2020), Bogor Zoology Museum (Borgor, 2017), LAXART (Los Angeles, 2016), SomoS Kunsthaus (Berlin, 2016), and the Whitney Museum (New York, 2015). Liu’s The Land at the Bottom of the Sea will be exhibited in The Metropolitan Museum of Art for the group exhibition “Monstrous Beauty: A Feminist Revision of Chinoiserie” opening in March 2025. Her works have also been exhibited at SculptureCenter (New York, 2024), 13th Taipei Biennial (Taipei, 2023), which commissioned her film The Land at the Bottom of the Sea (2023), Today Art Museum’s Future of Today Biennial (Beijing, 2023), Power Station of Art (Shanghai, 2021), MAK Center for Art + Architecture in collaboration with LACMA (Los Angeles, 2021), Smithsonian Museum of American Art (Washington D.C., 2020), ACC (Gwangju, 2019), MoMA (New York, 2019), Kunsthal Rotterdam (Rotterdam, 2019), Times Museum (Guangdong, 2019) , Singapore Biennial (Singapore, 2019), New Museum (New York, 2015), Shanghai Biennial (Shanghai, 2015), Royal Academy of Arts (London, 2008), Kunsthaus Zurich (Zurich, 2008), and Institute of Contemporay Art (London, 2004), among others.
Liu is recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman Grant, Hewlett 50 Arts Commission, Creative Capital Grant, LACMA Art + Technology Lab, Guggenheim Fellowship in Film/Video, the Cornell Tech \Art Award, the NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship in Digital/Electronic Art, and the Pollock-Krasner Award. She was artist-in-residence at Asia Art Archive in America in 2024 where she conducted research for I Am Cloud, and at Para Site Hong Kong in 2016, among others.
Liu currently lives and works between New York, USA.
