Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Liz Ensz

Artist

“A Proposal for the Self-Determination of Value”

LIZ ENSZ was born in Minnesota to a resourceful family of penny-savers, metal scrappers, and curators of cast-offs. She received her BFA in Fiber from the Maryland Institute College of Art (2005), and her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2013). Her work presents a comparative study of the mass-cultural investment in disposability and the human desire to imagine permanence through emblems, monuments, and commemoration. At the heart of her practice lies a determined material engagement, scavenger impulse, and a sincere hope for the rethinking of the valuation of people, resources, the environment, and living things. Ensz has exhibited her textiles and sculpture nationwide, including Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN; Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY; Roots and Culture Contemporary Art Center, Chicago, IL; Boston Center for the Arts, Boston, MA; The Sub-Mission, Chicago, IL; and Goucher College, Baltimore, MD. She has been awarded multiple grants and residencies, including The Creative Baltimore Fund Grant, The Gilroy Roberts Fellowship for Engraving, and The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Travel Fellowship. As an extension of her practice she has worked collaboratively to create platforms for others as co-founder and co-director of The Visitor Center Artist Camp and Sustainable Practice Symposium, an artist residency in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan; and as a member of the Leadership Team for FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, which includes coordinating a 2018 display of The Monument Quilt of the National Mall in Washington DC.