Microreview: The Poetic Power of Social Labour

Breathing Lesson 2023
Liza Lou, Breathing Lesson, Acrylic on rigid mounting canvas, nails, beaded cloths, 2023. Image from https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/liza-lou
Liza Lou Lehmann Maupin 04
Detail of Liza Lou, Breathing Lesson, 2023. Image: https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/liza-lou
Liza Lou 3
Detail of Liza Lou, Breathing Lesson, 2023. Image: https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/liza-lou
Liza Lou In Her Studio
Liza Lou In Her Studio. Image: https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/liza-lou
Date
2024 April
Subtitle
Mahroo Movahedi reviews Liza Lou, Breathing Lesson, Acrylic on rigid mounting canvas, nails, beaded cloths. 2023.
Type
microreview
Author / Publisher
Mahroo Movahedi for NewsLibrary
Author Info

As a visual artist and researcher in doctoral studies in social anthropology (Graduate School of Arts and Humanities, University of Bern), Mahroo Mohavedi employs ethnography as a narrative tool with which to pursue her interests in visual anthropology, multisensory studies, and themes of culture, landscape, and memory. She has exhibited in Switzerland and internationally and her works draw connections between psycho-geographies of place, space, and senses of belonging and loss.

Language

English

Also published here

Newsletter No. 62

Instagram @sarn_switzerland

Links and Sources

"Liza Lou", 2005, Peter Schjeldahl and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, Published by Skira.

"Liza Lou, Kitchen", 1996, the Whitney Museum of American Art.

http://lizalou.com

https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/artists/liza-lou/biography

https://www.nga.gov/press/acquisitions/2023/liza-lou.html

https://whitney.org/collection/works/34855

Liza Lou's approach to her art revolves around the synergy of technical mastery, conceptual depth, and an unyielding commitment to the process of bead-work. The materials she chooses, particularly glass beads, have the potential to convey narrative and symbolic weight. They become metaphors for the interconnectedness of individuals, communities, and social constructs. The narrative potential is further enhanced by the blurring of the lines between craft, art, and architecture in large-scale installations made of glass beads skillfully woven together.

Liza Lou's works are not only statically beautiful on the surface; they carry rich intellectual significance. She embraces the slow, time-intensive process of bead-work as an essential component of her artistic expression. She acknowledges the meditative quality of the repetitive labour and sees it as a mirror of life's rhythms and patterns. Meticulously placing thousands or even millions of tiny beads by hand, she speaks, moreover, directly to systems of labour, its value and perception in contemporary society. Profound and somber themes are concealed within the radiant allure of the beads. In her work Breathing Lesson, by skillfully arranging these beads, she weaves a narrative that transcends the literal representation and delves into the realm of symbolic storytelling.