About
Elizabeth Briel’s prints, paintings, and installations begin with materials imbued with meaning—papers devastated by a typhoon or made of military uniforms, paints of bone and lead—and frequently incorporate architectural elements. She received a BFA in Painting from the University of Minnesota, and has been awarded fellowships or residencies from China Exploration and Research Society (Shangri-la), Universiti Sains Malaysia (Penang), and Grabart (Barcelona). Briel has lived, worked and traveled in Hong Kong since 2006, and in Autumn 2024 she is opening a paper studio in Paris, Chambre de Papier.
Artists Statement
I make art about where I am: geographically, emotionally, historically. My art is made with light, time, and chance, capturing the sun's UV rays or wind and a sensation of belonging nowhere yet anywhere. As an immigrant, I am outside looking in, buffeted by partially-understood languages and cultural norms, often welcomed, sometimes tolerated, never accepted. This interior/exterior duality makes its way into many of my artworks. Visual influences include American abstraction and conceptions of negative space from various artforms of China and Japan.
Many works begin in modular fashion. Via repetition of process or form they become flexible, site-specific installations, breaking through standard rectangular formats of painting/printmaking to wrap around walls and transform space. In recent years my approach has been to view architecture as a matrix: instead of printing with machines, or creating printing plates for reproduction, I print directly from the city itself: its windows, walls, and grates, where light and atmosphere permeate the boundaries we create between interior and exterior lives.