We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Caroline Liu a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Caroline, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
The understanding that we’re all in long-term relationships with grief. The human experience is to hold love and grief and joy and hardship side by side. Knowing this, it makes resiliency feel less like a badge of adversity and more like a practice of self care.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I am a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Albuquerque, NM. I primarily create paintings, drawings, and murals, with the occasional piece of fiber art. My work explores decadent surrealism and cynical realism, intricately weaving together realistic and illustrative motifs that blur the boundaries between light and dark, real and imagined. Inspired by my own memories, culture, and identity, I reflect on the complexities of the Asian American experience from historical moments to the present day. Ultimately, my work creates new narratives that unpack our deep emotional states alongside modern-day critique.
I hold a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of New Mexico and have exhibited both nationally and internationally in galleries and museums. My work includes large-scale mural partnerships with major brands like Meta and Meow Wolf. In 2023, I debuted my first West Coast solo exhibition, ‘Stages of Grief,’ at Thinkspace Projects in Los Angeles, and a two-person exhibition, ‘Perhaps, and Nevermore,’ at Pie Projects Contemporary Art in Santa Fe. I recently completed a residency at the prestigious Wassaic Project in New York and participated in a traveling train residency hosted by curator Jorge Rojas and Ogden Contemporary Arts.
This traveling residency launched my work into an exciting traveling exhibition that opened this month at Ogden Contemporary Arts in Ogden, Utah. It will travel to Redline Contemporary Art in Denver in August 2024 and close at 516 Arts in Albuquerque, New Mexico in November 2024. The exhibition, titled “The Other Side of the Tracks,” discusses the impact of the Transcontinental Railroad on marginalized communities both during its construction and in the years that followed. For this exhibition, I created an expansive body of work that includes a large-scale painting and several intricate pencil drawings that serve as memorial tributes to the Chinese workers.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Curiosity, humbleness, and bravery beyond what you think you’re capable of.
I think these are the three best qualities to have. Lean into your curiosity and learn everything you can about what you want to create. Staying humble will let you continue to learn and grow. Don’t let your ego get the best of you, as there will always be someone else that knows more than you and can help. And be brave. Put yourself in experiences that you have no idea what you’re doing. You will learn, or you won’t. And that is also a learning experience. Trying things out by being brave helps propel you.
What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?
Time management is my biggest challenge. I often get overly excited and hyper-focused on a project, neglecting my chores and other responsibilities. Once I finish the project, I find myself needing to hyper-focus on everything I ignored while creating. I tend to ping-pong back and forth between these extremes, but ideally, I’d love to achieve a more balanced lifestyle. Perhaps this is just the artist’s way?
Contact Info:
- Website: carolineliu.com
- Instagram: @catsandart
- Other: TikTok: @heycatsandart
