Liza Lou - Continuous Mile
Liza Lou
“I’ve made work to take my revenge
Against injustice
Both personal and political
But now standing back,
I wonder
If art can be an act of forgiveness.
The object stands gleaming
Big enough to love anyone,
Forgive anything.”
“Why the bead in the first place? Why should that curious, punctured glass seed be used as the artist’s primary medium? (…) But, responding to the direct question, the artist replies, “Well, Why Not? I am interested in labour, in the accrual of time and material, pattern and repetition. The material satisfies a tendency that I have to work in a methodical and slow way. But it seems I bring this tendency to my work no matter what the metier. Drawings, for instance. Scale is very important to me. The macrocosm and the microcosm.” (Pincus-Witten, 24).
Pincus-Witten, Robert. “Liza Lou: Why Not Beads?” Liza Lou, L&M Arts, 2008, pp. 20-25
With an emphasis on repetition, formal perfection and materiality, Liza Lou’s sculptures and
environments thrive on the tension between the apparent impossibility of their construction,
the seductive beauty of their surfaces and the often sinister implications of their subject
matter. Continuous Mile is a coiled and stacked rope measuring a mile in length, woven
entirely out of bone-white beads, made with a team of Zulu bead workers in the townships of
KwaZulu Natal in South Africa. Conceived as a work about work, Continuous Mile is
exquisitely hand-wrought and manifests the social concerns that run throughout the artist’s
work. Continuous Mile has led to the making of Endless Mile, a major five-year project
launching the Endless Mile Foundation, to benefit artisans and their families by providing
sustainable income, health services, scholarships and social services.
https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artwork/18328/Liza-Lou- Continuous-Mile
“Liza Lou has redefined beading by removing it from a decorative context,” said Tina
Oldknow, curator of modern glass at The Corning Museum of Glass. “Trained as a painter,
Lou used colored lines of beads like brushstrokes to decorate the surfaces of her early
sculptures and installations. In her more recent work, such as Continuous Mile, the bead no
longer decorates the surface, but actually creates sculptural form.”
Lou creates meticulously beaded works that reference recurring themes, such as labor,
confinement, wonder, and human endurance. Lou emerged as a presence in the art world in
1996 with Kitchen (1991–96), a nearly life-size reproduction of a kitchen entirely covered in
beads, which was featured in an exhibition at the New Museum in New York. The work is an
over-the- top commentary on women’s work, popular culture and nostalgia, complete with a
perfectly beaded crumpled bag of potato chips, a spilled soft drink, and a sink full of dishes
in water. Lou has gone on to explore diverse subjects through the course of her prolific
career. Examples of her other work include Security Fence (2005) is a full-scale, silver
beaded enclosure of chain-link and razor wire that can neither be entered nor
exited. Untitled 10 (2011–2012) is one of a series of monochromatic beaded paintings in the
tradition of American minimalist painters such as Agnes Martin, Sol LeWitt, and Robert
Ryman.
http://www.cmog.org/press-release/corning- museum-glass- acquires-monumental- work-liza-
lou
Edition 2/2 (black). Continuous Mile took Liza Lou longer than a
year to make with a team of more than 50 beadworkers from
several townships in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The monumental
sculpture is composed of a coiled and stacked cotton rope,
measuring a mile in length, sewn with more than 4.5 million glossy
black glass beads. It is a work about work, about process, about
finding meaning in the everyday, and about managing many hands
to create something that could not be made by one person alone.
Continuous Mile was produced in an edition of two in black, and an
edition of two in white. Based in Los Angeles, Liza Lou emerged as
a presence in the art world in 1996 with an exhibition at the New
Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, of Kitchen, a sculptural
tableau utilizing millions of beads, which took five years for her,
working alone, to make. Architectural in scale, Kitchen introduced
some of Lou’s recurring themes: labor, confinement, and human
endurance. Her meticulous placement of individual beads and the
scale of the project represent a heroic effort that honors centuries of
uncelebrated women’s work. In 2002, Lou received a John D. and
Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. With the goal of
developing an economically sustainable project, she moved her
studio in 2005 to Durban, South Africa, where she assembled a
team of Zulu women, all skilled beadworkers, to enable her to
continue creating her labor-intensive art works. She has explored
diverse subjects throughout her career, beading a prison cell, a
closet, representations of deities, portraits of the American
presidents, a trailer, prayer rugs, images of Adam and Eve, a
security fence rimmed in razor wire, a toilet, and a noose, all in life-
size scale. Unsigned. Published: Eleanor Heartney and others, Liza
Lou, New York: Skira/Rizzoli, 2011, pp. 218–221. The artist’s
collaboration with South African beadworkers is described in her
catalog Durban Diaries, London: White Cube, 2012. See also
www.lizalou.com; and “A Conversation between Liza Lou,
Contemporary Sculptor and Installation Artist, and Tina Oldknow,
Curator of Modern Glass,” posted October 17, 2013: www.cmog
.org/article/conversation-between- liza-lou- contemporary -sculptor-
and-installation- artist-and- tina-oldknow.
With an emphasis on repetition, formal perfection and materiality, Liza Lou’s sculptures and environments thrive
on the tension between the apparent impossibility of their construction, the seductive beauty of their surfaces and
the often sinister implications of their subject matter.
Lou first gained attention when her monumental work Kitchen was shown at the New Museum of Contemporary
Art, NY, in 1996. This sculptural tableau introduced her trademark medium of glass beads, while simultaneously
establishing many of the social themes – such as labour, confinement and human endurance – that continue to
underpin her work today. Architectural in scale, Kitchen is a work of exacting labour and is a monument to
uncelebrated women’s work. Lou worked alone over a five-year period to realise Kitchen.
Mile is a coiled and stacked rope measuring a mile in length, woven entirely out of glossy black, or bone-white
beads, made with a team of Zulu bead workers in the townships of KwaZulu Natal. Conceived as a work about
work, Continuous Mile is exquisitely hand-wrought and manifests the social concerns that run throughout the
artist’s work. Continuous Mile has led to the making of Endless Mile, a major five-year project launching the
Endless Mile Foundation, to benefit artisans and their families by providing sustainable income, health services,
scholarships and social services.
That was July 2005. She has stayed on to develop and supervise a team of 30 Zulu
men and women, aged 19 to 52, beading artworks of massive dimensions and
intricate detail. The core members of the group had registered for work with the
municipality, and others were recruited through word of mouth; Lou pays them with
her own funds, including money she received from the MacArthur fellowship. Lou
admits that Africa simply had not been on her radar previously. Now it has become
her home. And while she acknowledges that it sometimes seems like sheer folly to
have relocated halfway around the world as she’s done, Lou is guileless and
courageous in equal measure, a shrewd manager and a creative risk-taker. Looking
back, she reflects, “Part of my art real estate is craft; it is part of the landscape that I
own. So why not go there, truly go there to the heart of it, in Africa?” Lou is referring,
of course, to a long history of beading among the Zulu, who are renowned for
producing superb and distinctive objects with intricate patterns and elaborate color
codes.
After an initial stint renting part of the BAT center’s space, Lou moved her project to
the Diakonia Centre in Durban’s hectic business district. Diakonia was once a
significant hub of anti-apartheid activity and still houses NGOs and nonprofits such as
Black Sash,3 Lawyers for Human Rights and the Mennonite Central Committee. Lou’s
studio is an anomaly there, but she was welcomed because of its outreach
component: none of her workers had previously held a regular job (she does not
refer to them as “beaders” but considers them artisans whose visual thinking she is
helping to expand). Her objective has been to develop an economically sustainable
project and provide much-needed training, while creating her own original artworks.
http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-features/magazine/liza- lou/
"Liza Lou has redefined beading by removing it from a decorative context,"
said Tina Oldknow, curator of modern glass at The Corning Museum of
Glass. "Trained as a painter, Lou used colored lines of beads like
brushstrokes to decorate the surfaces of her early sculptures and
installations. In her more recent work, such as Continuous Mile, the bead
no longer decorates the surface, but actually creates sculptural form."
Lou creates meticulously beaded works that reference recurring themes,
such as labor, confinement, wonder, and human endurance.
