01- A Search for Ghosts in the Meat Machine (detail)
Examining ways humans seek to understand themselves both through science and personal narrative. A set of nine sculptures exploring the existential notion of being quantifiable in today’s data-obsessed landscape.
02- A Taxonomy of Possible Consciousness
Exploring mind-body dualism, transhumanism, and AI, this work investigates the relationship between emerging science and our notions of sentience. Presented as a gradient of specimens each representing possibilities for sentience within emerging biological, electronic, and computational research.
03- Laboratory of Longings
04- Laboratory of Longings (detail)
Touching on themes of desire, loneliness, and yearning, this living installation harvests the sweat of a couple to feed a bed of carnivorous plants. Built as a reversal of the human-plant relationship in agriculture, the apparatus dreams to utilize biotechnology to create an olfactory time capsule.
05- Mind Controlled Spermatozoa
A system by which a woman can control the movement of sperm on a grid through the influence of electric fields. A project of biopolitics, control, this piece reflects on the female body as a historic site of contention.
06 and 07 – Current
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about systems of power and how they inhibit or promote equality, particularly in the domains of gender. How does scientific research produce and reinforce concepts of gender? How is sexism propagated through technological media? These are things that I am currently wondering.
08 – Current
I am also working on a video game exploring systemic inequality through the metaphor of climbing a career ladder. I will give updates when it is ready to share!
Ani Liu is a research-based artist working at the intersection of art & science. Her work examines the reciprocal relationships between science, technology, and their influence on human subjectivity, culture, and identity. Ani’s work has been presented internationally, including the forthcoming Venice Biennale, Ars Electronica, the Queens Museum Biennial, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Asian Art Museum, MIT Museum, MIT Media Lab, Mana Contemporary, Harvard University, and Shenzhen Design Society. She has been featured on National Geographic, VICE, Mashable, Gizmodo, TED, Core77, PBS, PCMag, FOX, and WIRED.
She is the winner of the Princeton Arts Fellowship (2019-2021), Groot Foundation Award (2020), the S&R Washington Prize (2018), the YouFab Global Creative Awards (2018), the Biological Art & Design Award (2017). Ani has a B.A. from Dartmouth College, a Masters of Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a Master of Science from MIT Media Lab. She is passionate about integrating multidisciplinary approaches to art-making, and is currently teaching at Princeton University. Ani continually seeks to discover the unexpected, through playful experimentation, intuition, and speculative storytelling. Her studio is based in New York City.