Louise Liliefeldt
Canadian / South African Artist- Performance Art, Painter
Louise Liliefeldt is a prolific and committed performance artist with an impressive professional exhibition history. Her work has developed consistently over the past decade, driven by disciplined research into the possibilities of live presence coupled with a willingness to take intelligent risks. The hallmarks of Louise’s performances include a powerful visual style; a complex consideration of the personal, social and political issues surrounding identity; and an ongoing passion for the rigours of duration, endurance and physical resistance.
Louise is best known for her visceral performance installations often inspired by classic images from popular culture, art history and the collective unconscious. She has a penchant for interdisciplinary and site-specific work, deftly weaving together various media including painting, sculpture, video projections and sound. Her presence as a performer is always a key element. She performs with intense focus, using techniques of stillness, repetition and contrasting physical tensions to maximum advantage. While writers and curators generally point to Louise’s arresting visual imagery, I believe the greatest strength of her work is in the way that she is able to focus an audience’s perception on what is askew. Her images are complex, invoking what is present but unseen, while at the same time evoking absences that generally go unacknowledged. These qualities provide the depth and layers of meaning that set her work apart.
(Text by Paul Couillard)
