Exhibiting in EPOCH: Wonderland

I am pleased to share that I am exhibiting in EPOCH: Wonderland, a group exhibition featuring artists of the Chinese diaspora. All artists are based in the US. The exhibition’s context is inspired by “Wonderland” —an abandoned amusement park project located in Chenzhuang Village, China. The show was curated by Peter Wu.

You can visit the virtual exhibition here: https://epoch.gallery/Wonderland/index.htm

A list of works with all of the other amazing artists is here: https://epoch.gallery/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Epoch_Wonderland_ListofWorks.pdf. The other artists include Patty Chang, Dominique Fung, Hings Lim, Candice Lin, Catalina Ouyang, Sydney Shen, Christine Wang, Ziyang Wu and Peter Wu.

Exhibiting in Evolutionaries at MU Hybrid Arthouse in the Netherlands

Evolutionaries offers a thrilling survey of the complex ways in which our shared concepts of nature, identity, culture and all that is living are fluid and in flux. The BAD Award projects, as ever, go beyond science communication. They zoom in on aesthetic and often also ethical aspects enabled by discoveries in the life sciences and the applications of biotechnology: from the possibility of same-sex biological parents and the colonial origin of zombie stories in relation to virology, to what can be learned from watching a plant play tag with a machine.

Bio art and design, as practiced by this talented pool of international artists, take on the vastness of our polluted seas as well as the disquiet of the souls sensitive to the weight of collective injustice. To the well-tuned ear their work cries for revolution and evolution simultaneously.

https://www.mu.nl/en/exhibitions/evolutionaries

Exhibition view of Untitled (Small Inconveniences). Photo credit: Hanneke Wetzer.

Exhibition view. Photo credit: Hanneke Wetzer.

Solo Show at NADA with Elijah Wheat Showroom

Dear Friends,

I am grateful to share I have a solo show opening on December 5th in upstate New York at Elijah Wheat Showroom. The show is also part of the NADA 2020 art fair.

Viewings will be socially distanced, masked, and can be arranged by appointment seven days a week by emailing whatsup@elijahwheatshowroom.com. The opening is open to the public in staggered small groups on December 5th from 1-8PM.

I am showing an installation titled A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine, originally commissioned as part of the Biological Art and Design Awards. This set of nine sculptures examines personhood from anatomical, psychological, genetic, biochemical, and algorithmic perspectives. In many ways, this installation is an emotional confrontation with being quantifiable.

This new iteration has updates reflecting my experience of 2020. With various electronics submerged in fluid, I find that my current lived reality, with its suffocating screens and the longing for physical presence, is in apt conversation with the original piece.

I am also showing an installation of a video game I have been developing titled Shapes and Ladders: Battles of Bias and Bureaucracy. It is a video game that explores and reveals how systemic racism and sexism can exist in the workplace. Set in the metaphor of a career ladder, players attempt to navigate through an office building rife with challenges.

You can learn more about these works on my website, or with the gallery.

Sending you warm wishes and energy,

Ani

Image: Glowing selfie ring submerged in fluid with copper 3d print of circular DNA. Photo credit Ani Liu.

Image: Live twitter feed COVID related hashtags powered by a computer submerged in an IV bag. Photo credit: Liz Nielsen.

Image: screen submerged in fluid playing a video of the artist in an infinite Zoom background wearing surgical mask in augmented reality. Photo credit: Liz Nielsen.

Image: 3d print of the artist’s corpus callosum, with capsules containing cell phone wifi antennas. Photo credit: Liz Nielsen.

Image: cubicle containing a level of the video game Shapes and Ladders: Battles of Bias and Bureaucracy. Photo credit: Ani Liu.

Image: Installation shot of nine sculptures, each at the artist’s height with vitrines of the artist’s body in volume. Each filled with various electronics, 3d prints and fluids. Photo credit: Ani Liu.

Showing Ghosts in the Zoom Machine at Hypertopia

Excited to share that I am showing work at Hypertopia, in Berlin.

https://state-studio.com/program/hypertopia

“Now that we’re here, where are we? Still on the same planet, for sure. But forces are shifting. How did we get here? What stance should we take? What actions? And where are we heading?

Hypertopia bridges between today and tomorrow. Powered by the vision of a collective change in consciousness, the interdisciplinary program and exhibition anticipates a post-crisis future to explore approaches for a meaningful present. With a selection of artistic positions, propositions and exploratory projects that incorporate scientific methods as well as speculative modes of thought, Hypertopia challenges hierarchies, probes ideas, and imagines scenarios for a new planetary optimism.

The exhibition presents works by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg (UK), Ani Liu (USA), Dominique Koch (CH), Salvatore Iaconesi and Oriana Persico (IT), Himali Singh Soin (UK/IND) and Jana Maria Dohmann (D) and a project by STATE’s Curious Minds Community; contributors to the discursive program – a series of field trips that take the show’s artistic positions and core ideas to relevant places in the city – will be announced shortly.

Image credit: Otto Felber

image credit: Otto Felber

Speaking at the University of Pennsylvania

I am speaking at the Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania, at Associate Professor of Architecture Simon Kim's seminar "Immersive Kinematics/Physical Computing: Body As Site." 

This lecture is open to the public. Registration is required. 

Awarded New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship

Honored to receive a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in the Digital / Electronic Arts category.

Feature in MIT Magazine

Wielding Science and Tech, She Creates Art That Imitates Life

“In her work, Liu seeks to constantly bridge the intellectual with the visceral and the emotional. The potent combination can shift viewers’ perceptions of what is real—and what is possible.”

You can read it here: https://alum.mit.edu/slice/wielding-science-and-tech-she-creates-art-imitates-life

Published an article in Biodesigned

I wrote an article for Biodesigned about my experience of pregnancy and some works I made during this time. You can read it here: https://www.biodesigned.org/ani-liu/the-consumerist-pregnancy

Participated in an Open Lab with Google Arts and Culture

A few weeks ago, I was invited by Zach Lieberman to partake in a collaboration between MIT Media Lab and Google Arts & Culture, bringing together a global community of artists and technologists to experiment, spark new ideas, and share time whilst it is not possible to share physical space during quarantine.

I had the great pleasure of working with Martial Geoffre-Rouland. You can see more here: https://experiments.withgoogle.com/open-lab

Exhibiting at the Venice Biennale, Architecture 2020

I have been invited to exhibit in this year’s Venice Biennale, with the theme “How will we live together?”

The Biennale Architettura 2021, curated by Hashim Sarkis, will be held in Venice (Giardini and Arsenale) in May of 20201

The new dates for the Biennale Architettura have been established as a consequence of the recent precautionary measures in the matter of mobility taken by the governments of a growing number of countries around the world, which will have a domino effect on the movement of people and works in coming weeks. This period of time coincides with the delicate initial phase of setting up an international exhibition as complex as the Biennale Architettura, which involves architects and institutions from over 60 countries on all continents.

This situation poses a risk to the realization of the Exhibition in its entirety in time for the announced opening date (May 23rd), thereby jeopardizing its quality. Furthermore, a short-term postponement could be ineffective, considering the complexity of the organizational machine, the number and importance of the subjects involved and the probable absence of many of them.

Unwilling to open an incomplete Exhibition, La Biennale, having heard the curator Hashim Sarkis and in consideration of the difficulties faced by the Participating countries and invited architects, has decided to postpone the inauguration until August 29th, bringing the duration of this year’s edition of the Biennale Architettura back to three months, from the end of August to the end of November.

This way, considering that the following week, September 2nd is the opening date of the 77th Venice International Film Festival directed by Alberto Barbera (through September 12th), at the end of the summer, with the almost concurrent opening of these two historic exhibitions, La Biennale will offer Venice and the world a moment of great cultural interest and international appeal.

Interview on Science Friday

This Biotech Artist Wants Scientists To Think About Their Creations”

https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/biotech-artist/

Giving a talk at the Zurich University of the Arts

Exhibition in Minecraft!

MOD gallery has creatively thought of ways to host exhibitions during the pandemic and has created several gallery experiences in Minecraft. Below is an experience they created based on my artwork “Biophilic Fantasies.” You can learn more here: https://mod.org.au/exhibits/mod-craft/?tab=biophilic-fantasies-archived

Exhibition: UNREAL at Science Gallery Rotterdam

I am exhibiting in an excellent show at the Science Gallery in Rotterdam curated by William Meyers. While the show will not be able to be attended by most in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic, you can visit the works online here: https://unrealexhibition.com/en

The show happens to be in a hospital, and it is my hope that it gives our medical professionals, our heroes at this time, some solace and inspiration. I wanted to take this time to thank all of those that are working so hard to keep us healthy and safe. Wishing all of you good health.

From the curator:

What is real, and how are you sure it is so? Can you be confident in your perceptions when so many experiences are digital or influenced by the changing chemistry and architecture of your brain? Biomedical research uncovers ways that our minds and ­senses produce gaps between the actual and the observed. How do we navigate such ‘blind spots’, which can be exploited by trickery like fake news, but then embraced willingly to escape from reality? Researchers work to answer, as well as to complicate ­these questions, as we build new understanding of mental ­conditions such as dementia and phenomena like the placebo effect, and we advance basic research in Neuro­science. At the same time, research in fields such as Genetics and Reproductive and Regenerative Medicine is destabilizing the reality of nature as we know it.

Brains are essentially prediction machines, according to recent arguments by scientists and philosophers. They are bundles of cells that support perception and action by constantly working to match sensory inputs with expectations or predictions. This set of images explores the computational and cognitive eye, as it relates to bodies, vision, cognition, and perception.

Algorithmic Animal Gaze displays images of the artist Ani Liu’s body, subdivided into small square parcels. These squares are organized hierarchically via the Shannon-fano algorithm, which sorts them, from the center outwards, according to how “interesting” they are — or how our gaze and a computer tend to track the body. Fascinatingly, the features the computational eye found interesting ended up being the same features human eyes like to dwell on — eyes, lips, breasts, vulva, fingers, nose.

The three images explore this concept at different levels of parcel resolution, testing the minimum viable feature size in which this algorithm and the human eye maintain their similarities. While the human brain looks for recognizable features — which is lost as parcels get too small to clearly identify an ‘eye’ or ‘nose’, for example — the algorithm only analyzes how predictable the pixels are, from parcel to parcel.

Featured on PBS Documentary

Happy to share a mini documentary about my practice on the show Articulate by PBS. You can watch it here: https://www.pbs.org/video/ani-liu-daughter-invention-kp99ym/

Exhibiting at Le Grand-Hornu: Nature Morte/ Nature Vivante

I am in an upcoming exhibition opening this month in Belgium. See information below for more details!

What we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning, and to this extent man only encounters himself. 

   
- Werner Heisenberg

Since the late 17th century, the French expression nature morte (literally ‘dead nature’) has been used to refer to still life, the field of painting that approaches nature from a sensual perspective and explicitly alludes to its fragility and ephemerality, and indirectly also to the vanity of human intervention on its composite elements. Over time, the term has extended to include any arrangement of inanimate objects organised in a certain fashion with a symbolic intention, which is meant to induce a poetic emotion. In our so-called “anthropocene” age, man’s unwarranted action is contributing to the impermanence of nature, or even its annihilation. With this sombre outlook, the term nature morte takes on even greater relevance. Yet nature has a formidable capacity for regeneration. Works by numerous creative minds question, provoke or encourage mechanisms that nature uses to underpin its intensity, reproduction and durability. In reality, each state of matter is a snapshot in a long, slow, evolutionary process of transformation, aggregation, assimilation and decomposition… Nature is very much alive! 

In this exhibition organised at the CID, designers, architects and artists present intensive, practical or experimental research that questions the relationship between man and nature, calling in equal measure on ecology, science, our moral conscience and artistic creation. 

Nature morte/Nature vivante reveals how much man’s ambiguous relationship with nature can be both perverse and inspiring.

http://www.cid-grand-hornu.be/en/expositions/Nature_Morte_Nature_Vivante/317/

Meet Three Women Changing The Intersection Of Art & Tech

“An AI terrarium that stays alive by receiving Instagram likes. A machine designed to mimic the sensation of a human hug. A wearable pregnancy simulator that isolates the womb from gender and sex. Such are three of this time's Adobe Festival Of The Impossible featured interactive art installations — all of which are designed by women immersive artists reimagining the possibilities of AR as an innovative storytelling tool.”

https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/09/8472970/ar-artists-adobe-festival-of-the-impossible#slide-3

Read the rest of the article at https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2019/09/8472970/ar-artists-adobe-festival-of-the-impossible#slide-3

Bringing Immersive Art Installations to Life at Festival of the Impossible

A short article about the show that I will be exhibiting in at Chandran Gallery in San Francisco, generously sponsored by Adobe.

https://theblog.adobe.com/immersive-art-installations-festival-of-the-impossible/

Exhibiting at the Festival of Impossible in Chandran Gallery

This is a journey into the intimacy of Human-Machine, A concept which involves interaction through augmented experiences as well as enhanced human senses and deeper personal connections. Visitors will be able to experience immersive art installations that evoke wonder and challenge our thinking about what could be possible as we move into the future. Leave it to the forward thinking artists along with their amazing tools to keep us dreaming of what may come! This is the second installment of the Festival of the Impossible, premiering again this year in San Francisco on September 26-29th, 2019 at Chandran Gallery!

https://www.festivaloftheimpossible.com/

New Review of See Yourself X on Neural

Proud to be part of this book that just got an awesome review in Neural! Big congrats and gratitude to Madeline Schwartzman for writing this mind expanding volume, and for including my work in it!

http://neural.it/2019/09/madeline-schwartzman-see-yourself-x-human-futures-expanded/