bio


“Terry Berlier makes conceptual art of unusual intelligence, humor and sensitivity to the impact of materials.”—Kenneth Baker, San Francisco Chronicle

“Sculpture for Terry Berlier serves the unambiguous, if intangible function of exercising the imagination much in the same way a bicycle stretches out the legs. Her work constitutes a truce between sculpture, installation and craft, reframed, reconditioned, and perpetually reoccurring. Her work has used trash or obsolete detritus of consumer consumption as points of departure, alluding to its topical content with various degrees of abstraction and metaphor. Rather than predetermined allegorical narratives, the work presents a constellation of seemingly incongruous sculptural and installation elements in which the viewer is caught up, setting in motion dialogues concerning wellbeing, and human relationships, consumption and survival. Subject to the alchemies of representation, recognizable fragments taken from everyday life re-emerge, occupying an abstracted or ambiguous landscape that seems to vibrate with potential. Indeed, one of my favorite pieces from her time as a graduate student, was a human tuning fork. This open-ended investigation, critically and pragmatically engage in the discourses and practices concerned with art’s relationship to place, collaboration, ethics, material and interdisciplinary research. Within her work is concerned with the rule, history, and the potential of art in relationship to society.” — Annabeth Rosen

In my practice, I interweave movement and sound to investigate the evolution of human connections with queerness and ecologies. This results in kinetic and sound-based sculptures and multimedia installations that work as metaphors for both harmonious and dissonant interactions. Emphasizing the essential roles played by cultural memories and environmental conditions in the creation of our identities, I excavate material objects to challenge our understanding of progress and reveal how history is constructed within a cultural landscape. Orienting, disorienting, and reorienting, my work provides tools to recover and reanimate our faltering connections with self, queerness, nature, and society, often through humor. My collaborators include engineers, composers, musicians, architects, and natural scientists.

Terry Berlier is an interdisciplinary artist who investigates the evolution of human interaction with queerness and ecologies. She has exhibited in solo and group shows in North America, Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia including at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, Contemporary Art and Spirits in Osaka, Japan, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Stanford Art Gallery. She has received numerous residencies and grants including the Center for Cultural Innovation Grant, the Zellerbach Foundation, and the Arts Council Silicon Valley Artist Fellowship. Her work has been reviewed in the Art in America, BBC News Magazine, San Francisco Chronicle, is published in the book ‘Seeing Gertrude Stein’ by Wanda Corn and Tirza Latimer through University of California Press, and ‘Slant Step Book: The Mysterious Object and The Artworks it Inspired’ by Francesca Wilmott and Phil Weidman. Her work is in several collections including the Kala Art Institute, University of Arizona, Tucson, Bildwechsel Archive in Berlin, Germany, and Progressive Corporation. She received a Masters in Fine Arts in Studio Art from University of California, Davis and a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. Berlier is an Associate Professor and Director of the Sculpture Lab in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University. She serves as an advisory board member for Recology’s Artist-in-Residence Program in San Francisco.