Lilli Muller
Getting people engaged in the artmaking process offers them a different awareness while mirroring their own life experiences. As I have witnessed over the years, it is no longer simply about the artwork itself, but the personal impact it has on each individual, and any further change it may cause. This inspires me to continue making art for the people, with the people, and about the people.
My inspirations are drawn from the colors of life, human experiences, and the puzzle pieces of emotional states of mind, weaving like a red thread through layering visuals, hidden messages and symbols, assuming obvious perceptions and surprise reveals.
After years of exploring the dynamics of the human condition, illustrating and deconstructing the human body, examining motives and emotions, through the ever-present idiomatic filter of the human body, my art continues to evolve. My casting sessions are mostly done in public settings, exploring my own involvement as a public act of intimacy, acceptance, communion, ritual, and sensuality. It is a continuous attempt to reformulate our human condition, mirroring our current situations and the essence of particular moments in time.
Drawing on the artistic disciplines of the past, my European heritage and the history-laden environment I grew up in, I have come full-circle in appreciating the “old school” traditional art making. Now I am combining it with the fresh eye of today, while also addressing the past and future, focusing on universal issues, and translating them into today’s language. Through my ongoing internationally exhibited works, “The Mandala Project Series,” I am continuing to follow my own personal goal to create an ever-morphing body of work that changes over time and yet maintains constant validity.
My current work focuses on new labor-intensive, multi-media, interactive performance projects both locally and internationally that address global issues and the state of humanity worldwide. One upcoming project will address the plight of thousands of unknown migrants who have perished in the desert while crossing the border from Mexico to the U.S.. Their unclaimed bodies and bones are literally left in the dust, most of them never to be found, or buried in mass graves of unidentified men, women and children, as my installation of white plaster body parts will symbolize. It is about the loss of their identity, and through this installation, the attempt to give it back, with respect and acknowledgment of their life, home, culture, and tradition, no matter what their origin. Other pending international projects are: The Mandala Project: Ground Zero, The Mandala Project Berlin: 14 days Along the Berlin Wall, and The Bridge to Selma. I am also planning multiple projects destined for Europe and the Middle East, that will impact the audience by engaging them in dialog, and affecting change in communities, one piece of art and one person at a time. These complex, multi-media exhibits include sound, projection, and video interaction with performance art. My other studio works include drawing, painting, mixed media sculpture, video performance and conceptual installations.
Look when you don’t want to see.
Listen when you don’t want to hear.
Speak out loud what you don’t want to say,
Walk from the outside in, to discover the inside, outside.
For more information about the artist, please visit her website.