Liza Wolters

video, uitwisseling, Taal, samenwerking, omgeving, Objecten, mens, installatie, fotografie, Autobiografisch

In her practice, visual artist Liza Wolters (1992) investigates the liminal space found in the relation between people and their environment. She observes and records her surroundings by means of photography, video, or words. In exhibitions, publications, collaborations, and installations, material from the archive is juxtaposed with observations made in situ, in a way that adapts and reacts to the situation and the other way around. A way to understand the world, to interrogate positions, and to explore other perspectives.

**her her, 2025** - Site-specific installation as part of the group exhibition 'UNDERCURRENTS' at NARS Foundation, Brooklyn, New York. Photograph of a trashbag in water printed on organic silk, steel frame as carrier, CRT television with a video following fragments around Kimlau Square, a portal that cries or drips, text on the wall ‘you know…I love this city as much as I love my mother’, a yellow light bulb, two intimate forks, a concrete stone with two holes, a pierced pin, a photograph of a wall that continues while taking a break, projection of waiting cars on ceiling. The residency at NARS Foundation is kindly supported by the Mondriaan Fund, Gemeente Rotterdam, CBK Rotterdam, Bekker-La Bastide-Fonds and Fonds Kwadraat.

**MOTHERSTONES, 2025** - During my first walk through the Greenwood Cemetery in New York, I noticed how common the gravestones do not mention a name nor context about the passed away person - nor a glimpse of what they mean to the still living. No birth date or date of death, no personal line of a life lived. The only thing remaining and eternalized in stone, is the binary role someone had (and therefore, still has) in the biological family. I spent many hours at the cemetery and came across so many mothers, daughters, fathers, aunts and uncles, sometimes unclear to which family name someone still “belonged”. Often there was ‘his wife’ and not surprisingly, rarely ‘her husband’. Giving I have no father in my life, I organically was drawn to all the motherstones as a comforting act and it became an obsession to capture as many of them as I could. It may say something about absence or about presence: the obsession could have easily been the other way around. The motherstones represent for me ideas of mothership and caretakers, also apart from binary perspectives. And I kept thinking about the other, how deeply alienation is rooted and how someone (also, you) can exist outself yourself. Later, I found a beautiful stone on the streets, decided to carve for the other, whoever that may be, and return it to the cemetery. A death for alienation, and a recognization we are all, also, other. This project is in process, a publication and installation will be made out of it.

**(detail) a constellation of freckles, 2025** - In this site-specific studio installation, I brought together some particles of who I’ve met and what I found during my residency at NARS Foundation in New York, considering the city as exhausted/exhausting main character of it all. It turned out to be a pretty scattered gathering between it all, translated into fragmented texts, photographs, video, sound and (found) objects. The residency at NARS Foundation has been kindly supported by the Mondriaan Fund, Gemeente Rotterdam, CBK Rotterdam, Bekker-La Bastide-Fonds and Fonds Kwadraat.

**a constellation of freckles, 2025** - In this site-specific studio installation, I brought together some particles of who I’ve met and what I found during my residency at NARS Foundation in New York, considering the city as exhausted/exhausting main character of it all. It turned out to be a pretty scattered gathering between it all, translated into fragmented texts, photographs, video, sound and (found) objects. The residency at NARS Foundation has been kindly supported by the Mondriaan Fund, Gemeente Rotterdam, CBK Rotterdam, Bekker-La Bastide-Fonds and Fonds Kwadraat.

**bodily metaphors of various kinds, 2023** - bodily metaphors of various kinds is a video installation by visual artist Liza Wolters that focuses on the many layers involved in the process of organ transplantation. During this years’ Summer School of the Science Gallery, the lively and profound conversations and sharings gave space to address the complexity and importance of transplantation. Every layer could exist in relation to each other: the personal, the ethics, the formal procedures, the treatments, the science, the research, the developments within modern technology, and a lot in between. The insightful days raised many questions, feelings and thought processes on how to relate to a body, as well as where it begins and ends. What it means to be sick, and to become unsick. In the work, Wolters consciously scans several layers that are part of the organ transplantation process. Each layer is treated not only equally, but also as tissue, intertwined with each other. By treating body material as soft architecture, it’s not always clear where one embodiment starts and one ends, and the line between the human and the architectural, the non-human, and the body fades. As a red thread, the sewing of flower petals, symbolising the fragility of the human body, is a recurring motif throughout the installation. Cinematography – Rik Komáromi Edit – Rik Komáromi and Liza Wolters With great thanks to Science Gallery Rotterdam, Fred Balvert, Tess de Ruiter and Rawad Baaklini and all the fellows of the summer school on Organ Transplantation Saja Amro, Polina Balvert, Alcide Breaux, Isabella Clayton, Sandu Cojocari, (the sewing hands of) Helena Daher Gomes, Moosje M Goosen, Meryem al Fatly, Julia de Heide, Pragya Jain (PJ), Başak Kırıcı, Emily Liang, Kaja Majoor, Saran Munnichs, Claudia Oliveira, Elizabeth Racicot, Laura Rodrigues, Gizem Sivrikaya, Roosje Verschoor, Marleine van der Werf, and all the invited guests Erasmus MC Rotterdam Kees Nijs, Roeland de Wilde and everyone else who helped with filming.

**(all of it but not all of it), 2022-2023** - A four-storey layered installation spread over the stairwell and elevator, enclosing their position as in-between spaces in relation to a text, a soundtrack, several photographs, videos and objects. The installation was part of the Parkstad Limburg Prijs ‘22 exhibition at SCHUNCK*, amongst the solo presentations from the other nominees (Floor Martens, Mickey Yang, Mike Moonen, Morena Bamberger, Quinn Zeljak, Vera Gulikers and William Ludwig Lutgens).

**Orchestrating Coincidence, 2021-2023** - Orchestrating Coincidence is a project by Hilde Onis and Liza Wolters An edition of 30 unique sculptures existing of 26 individuals, 2 pairs and 5 artist proofs. With Orchestrating Coincidence, Hilde Onis and Liza Wolters take on the representation of the in-between, resulting in a series of 30 sculptures that defy odds by finding connection at their breaking point. By developing a method that aims to constrain but meanwhile evokes accident, the series’ individual objects have a say in controlling it’s own contours. Departing from these notions, they explore existing linear views of (gendered) positive and negative space in sculpture. The thirty unique sculptures are paired with an emphasizing publication that plays with character assignment. The printed leporello catalog integrally touches upon what it means to collect and be one of a whole. Next to the catalog, the series connects to an essay written synchronously to their production. Constructed through and around various artists and thinkers who take erosion, fragility, interspace and the ‘failure’ of objects in their original function as their point of departure, the text explores content emerging from parenthesis and absent material. ________ Exhibition at Gallery Nieuw Charlois (15.01 - 25.02.23), Rotterdam (NL) In the one-off exhibition of ‘Orchestrating Coincidence’, the edition as a whole was presented in a site-specific installation. Concrete fault lines ran through the space, with the entire edition spread over them.

**Comforting to Celebrate, 2021** - Troost om te vieren (Comfort to Celebrate) is an education workshop created by visual artists Katrein Breukers, Liza Wolters and theatre maker Peerke Malschaert, on invitation of TENT Rotterdam. The workshop researches the visible and hidden powers of rituals regarding comforting and honouring. Participants take an imaginary journey to two worlds: the tent of comfort and the garden of celebration. The first space is a warm and soft place where we take care of what we feel. Big and small emotions are received, nurtured and visually translated. In the second space, we celebrate, and the pupils build a growing Gesamtkunstwerk for themselves and with each other, in which emotions are honoured and literally given a place. “Comforting to Celebrate” is created in reaction to the group exhibition “WHO WANTS TO LIVE IN A WORLD WITHOUT MAGIC?”, curated by Katayoun Arian of TENT.

**toevluchtsoord - work period and exhibitions initiated together with Raquel Vermunt, 2021** - For our site-specific work period at Hilton Art Lab, located in the old breakfast room of the Hilton Hotel in Rotterdam, the hotel was our starting point. We stayed there day and night, roamed around and worked on multiple site-specific exhibitions together with others. Everything we made in the hotel was directly translated into the space of H(a)L. We got to know the spaces through our own and each other's eyes. We were absorbed in the hotel, its rooms and corridors. A hotel is always standing still in a way. It’s a place where the visitors do not define the place; it’s the place itself that does this. It doesn't matter who is sleeping there, as long as someone is sleeping there. It's not about who's waiting in the foyer, as long as someone is waiting. We invited other artists to roam with us during the work period and with whom we created the exhibition moments. Visual artist and filmmaker Emma van der Put sent us a combination of two video works to which we responded with work of our own, and which we brought together in a video installation. We organised a live printshop with visual artist and writer Lorelinde Verhees, where collages and combinations were made in one day, with the images we photographed in the hotel. Musician Wouter van Nienes played a live set surrounded by videos and moving photographic images by us. Artist duo Leopold/Emmen, consisting of filmmaker Nanouk Leopold and visual artist Daan Emmen, delivered two works that we brought together with our own video work during the closing weekend of the work period.

**IT MIGHT BE GONE, IT MIGHT BECOME (work title – research project 2020 – …)** - What do you need in order to (re)capture an original, impactful, live moment on film? The research is founded on the reconstruction of “live” moments she has experienced, and what is left of them once recorded. “Can (the memory of) an original moment be preserved, or does it change in a fundamental way as the memory is cinematographically reconstructed?” Just like her earlier work, Wolters’ cinematic work is made up of fragmentary snapshots of everyday scenes and encounters, details from reality. More often than not, a moment will fade away before you get the chance to capture it. - Fragment from the in originally Dutch written version by Sandra Smets for CBK Rotterdam, who kindly granted the project with a research & development subsidy

**“This is The Sky”, said The Limit** - Photo on aluminium, 120 x 200 cm Wolters' works in the group show AS FAR AS I CAN REACH bring three given elements together that are entirely unrelated at first glance: Quartair's physical space, Liza’s grandmother who's fallen down, and a recent conversation she had with an acquaintance. Through association, these three inputs – the space, the fall and the conversation – feed directly into a new series of works. Instead of reaching for something higher, she aims to concentrate on what is, for now. The titles of the works refer to the possibilities and impossibilities involved in this. Including all attempts, wishes, desires and expectations. Part of group show 'AS FAR AS I CAN REACH' 8 - 17 juli 2018, Quartair (The Hague, NL) Curated by Marilou Klapwijk

**fragment of 'Knowing that it will change over time, Feeling that it will stay the same for now.'** - Various materials; photographs printed on different materials and sizes, video works and found materials/objects - Solo exhibition at der Neue Galerie in Landshut (DE), 04.05 - 27.05.2018

**fragment of NOW IS A DIFFERENT BACK THEN** - Solo exhibition at Museum SCHUNCK*, Heerlen (NL), 25.11.2017 - 14.01.2018. In the same way as a photograph, an exhibition can be considered as a ‘snapshot’. The exhibition in SCHUNCK* functions as one large, temporary installation. Everything relates to everything else, even the space which visitors occupy between the works of art forms an integral part. Much can happen there: works can move, change shape and get closer, and visitors can likewise develop a relationship with them and make connections. Sometimes, you can forget they are mere photos: the works are almost sculptures, physical in essence, and have a forceful spatial presence. • Fragment out of the accompanying text for the exhibition, written by Florette Dijkstra Now is a different back then is kindly supported by Fonds Kwadraat, CBK Rotterdam, Yolk and Mondriaan Fonds. Three works from the exhibition are part of the collection SCHUNCK*, Gemeente Heerlen’.

**All of these images are the outcome of certain observations** - The work All of these images are the outcome of certain observations is a book based on the concept of collection and archiving. Neither a collection nor an archive can consist of only one element – one thing needs another to exist. I have selected a number of works from my own photo archive of everyday scenes and brought them together in this book. The photographs have been stacked and then photographed again. The physical form of All of these images are the outcome of certain observations is subject to the rules of collecting and archiving: due to its slanted cut, the book requires support from other objects around it in order to stay upright. 184 pages 31 x 21 x 2,8 cm Edition of 250 self published Each book costs € 85,00 and is personally signed and numbered. If you would like to have a copy of your own, please send an email to info@lizawolters.com.

Mede-oprichter en kernlid Club Solo

Datum: 01-10-2013 t/m 01-02-2017

In samenwerking met: Alle kernleden Club Solo, uitgenodigde kunstenaars, Van Abbemuseum, M HKA

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