LEFT, RAW MATERIALS
AND WORKS IN
PROGRESS ARE LAID
OUT IN LOU’S STUDIO
BELOW, THE ARTIST
USES IMPASTO TO
CREATE TEXTUREto the character of each piece that Lou
eventually did away with colour entirely and
made the imperfections the focal point of
her work. Lou’s 2016 installation The Waves
featured a thousand dishcloth-sized squares
comprised entirely of white beads and the
handprints of those that made them.
Emphasising process over concept, these
new bodies of work revealed the shifts in
Lou’s practice occurring at a deeper level.
While Kitchen transformed the drudgery of
domesticity into a glamorous wonderland,in South Africa the beads possessed weighty,
centuries-old cultural significance. ‘The
history of painting pales in comparison,’
Lou says. In Durban’s townships, women
sold beaded works by the roadside. ‘It was
lifeblood to them. Beads meant that if you
could make something, you could survive.’
Living in South Africa galvanised Lou’s
engagement with issues of women and
labour into a kind of social practice. Acutely
conscious not to aggrandise herself as a white
saviour in Africa, she set the groundwork forher 30 employees’ economic empowerment
with a sense of respect and humility,
emphasising an ‘elbow-to-elbow’ dynamic in
her studio. It was a break with local custom,
however, when she required them to set up
their own bank accounts rather than funnel
their earnings into those of their partners.
She also hosted Zulu speakers to destigmatise
HIV and tuberculosis and facilitated
medication; she created scholarships for her
employees to attend business courses and
university; and paid each of them enough
to hire employees of their own.
‘I kind of went through a crisis coming
home,’ says Lou, who returned to LA in 2015.
The quiet hills of Topanga Canyon are a far
cry from Durban’s ‘noise and joy and depth
of encounter’. There, Lou started painting
The Clouds, she says, a totally new direction
for her work. ‘I was adjusting to being alone.’
Lou goes back to Durban intermittently.
‘I don’t promise myself I’ll always work with
this material,’ she says. But the bond with
her studio would outlast her use of beads,
regardless: ‘The most beautiful people I’ve
met in my life were in South Africa.’
The cloud patterns in Durban, too, Lou
says, were incredible – stalwart puffs of white
rolling across the sky. The occasionally wispy
cirrus clouds and airplane contrails in LA are
decidedly less impressive, though a reminder
that she is never really alone. ‘There is
something about the clouds that connects us,’
Lou says. ‘To everything, to everyone.’ ∂
Liza Lou’s ‘The Classification and Nomenclature
of Clouds’ is at Lehmann Maupin, 501 West
24th Street, New York, 6 September-27 October.
lizalou.com; lehmannmaupin.com‘Beadwork was lifeblood to Durban women.
If you could make something, you could survive’
142 ∑
Art