Beili Liu is a visual artist who creates site-responsive installations and performances that address themes of migration, cultural memory, labor, and social and environmental concerns. She is the Leslie Waggener Professor in the College of Fine Arts and a Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
Liu has exhibited nationally and internationally in locations including Norway, Finland, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Lithuania, France, Belgium, Poland, 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 at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; 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; San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, CA; and internationally at the Hamburg Art Week, Germany; M.K. Ciurlionis National Art Museum, Kaunas, Lithuania; Zhejiang Museum of Art, China; 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, Bremerhaven, Germany, Taiwan, San Francisco, CA, Dallas and Austin, TX.
Liu has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship (2022–2024), Pollock Prize for Creativity (2022), Fulbright Arctic Chair, Norway, a Fulbright Distinguished Chairs Award (2021–2022), the Fulbright Finland Inter-Country Grant (2022), the Brian Wall Grant for Sculptors Grant (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 artist residencies at 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, Woodside, CA (2006), 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.
Liu received her M.F.A. degree from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2003. She served on the National Endowment for the Arts Museum Panel (2019). Liu has received the Dads’ Association Centennial Teaching Fellowship (2020–2021), the College of Fine Arts Distinguished Service Award (2020–2021), and the Institute for Humanities Fellowship at the University of Texas at Austin (2020–2022).