2023 NAEA Research Preconvention

Engage in presentations and interactive sessions with colleagues, and hear from these Keynote artists as well.

Learn more about the Research Preconvention and register here.

Beili Liu

Artist and Leslie Waggener Professor in Fine Arts, University of Texas at Austin

Image credit: Phillip Rogers.

Beili Liu is a visual artist who creates material-and-process-driven, site-responsive installations and performances. Liu’s current research focus on the complex ecological, political, and environmental concerns facing the Circumpolar North and the urgency of the climate crisis on a planetary scale. Liu states, “I am called to visit the Arctic, a place that embodies the sorrows and hopes of our shared planet.” Working with commonplace materials and elements such as thread, needle, scissors, feather, salt, wax, and cement, Liu manipulates their intrinsic qualities to extrapolate complex cultural and environmental narratives.

https://www.beililiu.com

Annette Lawrence

Artist/Professor Emerita, University of North Texas/Visiting Faculty, Bennington College, Vermont

Image credit: Seth Freeman.

Annette Lawrence’s art transforms raw data from everyday life into drawings, objects, and installations. Her subjects of inquiry range from body cycles to ancestor portraits, music lessons, unsolicited mail, and journal-keeping. She addresses questions of text as image, and the relationship between text and code. Lawrence’s work is grounded in examining what counts, how it is counted, and who is counting. Her process is one of making and unmaking, looking, and waiting. She recognizes things that go unannounced, remain steady and continuous, are unremarkable on the surface, and develop meaning over time.

https://www.annettelawrence.net/