Ani Liu is an artist and speculative technologist working at the intersection of art and science. Trained at MIT Media Lab, she creates research-based art that explores the social, cultural, & emotional implications of emerging technologies. Seeking to link technological innovation with emotional tangibility, her work has ranged from prosthetics to architecture, augmented reality to synthetic biology.
Ani’s work has been presented at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Asian Art Museum, MIT Museum, MIT Media Lab, Wiesner Gallery, Harvard University, and media channels such as VICE, Gizmodo, TED, FOX and WIRED. She taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and has served on numerous design panels at esteemed institutions including Dartmouth College, MIT, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. She is on the committee of Art Scholars at MIT. Ani continually seeks to discover the unexpected, through playful experimentation, intuition, and speculative storytelling. Her studio is based in New York City.
Artist statement: The subjectivities of humans have long been influenced by scientific and technological breakthroughs. Some scientific revolutions, such as Copernicus’ model, which shifted the center of the universe from the Earth to the Sun had religious implications. Other breakthroughs, such as that of synthetic biology, raise philosophical and existential questions on what life is. With every technology and scientific development, our plastic subjectivity goes through modifications and expansions. As an artist, I live in this plasticity, exploring the impact of technology on culture and identity. Imbuing scientific processes with storytelling, narrative, and emotional expression, my work explores themes of the subconscious, longing, nostalgia, and memory– exploring in this technologically mediated age, what does it mean to be human?
