Hi! I’m Liz.
BIOGRAPHY:
Liz Groeschen is a Brooklyn based artist, writer, and producer. Originally from Alexandria, Kentucky, she began her art practice by documenting different cultures around the world while teaching English as a Foreign Language in the Czech Republic and South Korea. She began working as a freelance writer and photographer in Seoul. Her work has been exhibited in Asia and The United States and has been featured in The Korea Herald, The LA Times, and The Guardian (among others). In 2012, Seoul Selection published a book “Charlie and Liz’s Subway Adventures” featuring her photography from a three-year documentary project examining Seoul neighborhoods.
Upon leaving Korea, she spent 15 months traveling through 30+ countries working on an extensive photography and video project. While readjusting to life in America, she focused on writing, producing, and even performing (improv at The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and storytelling at The Magnet) until the height of Covid-19 forced everyone to stay at home. She documented her (then) 2-year-old navigating social distancing, taught herself how to weave, and completed a personal encaustic crayon series from boxes she had collected while traveling around the world.
In the Summer of 2022, she learned how to Riso print, and founded Oh! Wow! Printshop, a playful Riso press, and has since been exploring the spoken and unspoken expectations of life as a woman – specifically in America – through printmaking, collage, and fiber projects.
Liz, her husband, two boys, and one dog can be found in Prospect Park most weekends.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
My early beliefs of identity, gender expectations, and femininity were formed by the women in my family more so than societal expectations. My grandmother, a chemist in the 1940s, prioritized her career and didn’t marry until she was 30 years old. Forty years later, my mother pursued a master’s degree in library science while raising four children of her own. These women were my norm – and yet this norm inadvertently fueled a feeling of otherness growing up, amplified when I moved away from my small Kentucky town and again when I moved out of the country in early adulthood.
While living in South Korea, my otherness was multiplied, as I was a “waygook” (foreigner) with – what felt like – a completely different set of expectations placed upon the women there. These expectations – both in and out of America – influenced the way I viewed myself and other women and led me to investigate the way gender roles have been defined and shaped (often arbitrarily) by societies around the world.
My multidisciplinary art practice explores the spoken and unspoken expectations of life as a woman, critiquing perceptions of equality.
Through photography, film, collage, print-making, and traditional fiber techniques, often utilizing sustainable and found materials, it pays attention to memory while challenging stereotypes. I create a dialogue between the ideas of gender, inclusion, capitalism, commercialism, and subjectivity by addressing femininity in the form created in the 1950s: the ideal housewife form I unknowingly witnessed my grandmother, and later my mother confronting.
By challenging the 1950s housewife narrative, my work questions the notion of equality today while oftentimes reflecting my own experiences in hopes to encourage all people to explore how they support gender equality from institutions and policy to personal interactions.
CV:
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023 We’ve Come a Long Way…?, The Art Center Highland Park, Highland Park, IL, USA
2023 MoMA Creativity Lab, Temporary Zine Library, NY, NY, USA
2023 Paper + Post, Boise State University Fine Arts Gallery, Boise, Idaho, USA
2012 The Nude Collection, Gallery Golmok, Seoul, South Korea
2011 Erotic Fantasies, Blind Spot, Seoul, South Korea
2011 Paper at the Edge of Art, Jay Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2011 The Expat Apartment Project, Laughing Tree Lab, Seoul, South Korea
2011 Foreign, Door Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2010 The Big Color Dance, Flat Iron Arts Building, Chicago, IL, USA
2010 4th Annual Emerging Artists Exhibition, Morpho Gallery, Chicago, IL, USA
2009 1000 Ghost Bikes Exhibition, Lillstreet Art Center, Chicago, IL, USA
2007 Ghetto Fabulous, The Orange Tree, Seoul, South Korea
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2011 International Artists Community, September Featured Artist, South Korea
PUBLICATIONS
2014 – 2016 B&H Photo.com (Explora consumer blog)
2011 – 2012 Groove Magazine
2011 – 2012 SEOUL Magazine
2010 – 2012 Seoul Sub→urban.com
2011 Dong Ah Ilbo
2011 Korea Herald
2011 Christian Science Monitor
2007 – 2011 SpeakEasy: A Cultural Project
NEW MEDIA
2019 B&H Photo Podcast Guest Host: Milk Factory - A Mother’s Day Chat with Corinne May Botz
WORKSHOPS AND LECTURES
2019 CreativeMornings Field Trip Host, Make Your Own Valentines
2018 B&H Photo OPTIC Main Stage Speaker, Travel Photography and the Self Assignment
AWARDS
2009 Nippon Steel U.S.A. Presidential Award
2003 Loyola University Chicago Mulcahy Scholar
EDUCATION
2017 – 2020, 2022 Continuing Education Studies, School of Visual Arts, New York, NY
2021 Undergraduate Art History Course, Hunter University, New York, NY
2008 – 2009 Post Baccalaureate Studies, Photography, School of the Art Institute Chicago, IL
2005 TEFL Certificate, TEFL Worldwide Prague, Czech Republic
2000 – 2004 Bachelors of Arts, Communication: Film & Media Studies, Minors: Theater, French, Loyola University Chicago, IL
2002 Loyola University Rome Campus, Italy
2001 French Intensive Language Study, University of Provence, France