Presented in partnership with the V&A South Kensington, Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions: Matter and Light is a series of artist talks exploring light and matter.

The first of which by Liliane Lijn presented the artists’ ideas and methodology behind her work. Lijn was born in New York and studied archaeology at the Sorbonne and Art History at the Ecole du Louvre, Paris (1958). Living in New York between 1961 and 1963, experimenting with fire and acids and working with light, poetry, movement and liquids, she rapidly established herself as a leading kinetic artist through many international exhibitions.

In 1966 she moved to London. She has featured in numerous group exhibitions in Britain, Europe and Japan, and is represented in important public and private collections in Britain, France, Australia and the United States. In 2005, she was ACE, NASA artist in residence at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley and presently has a residency at Narec: New and Renewable Energy Centre Northumberland UK.

Liliane Lijn’s work covers a large spectrum of interests, from Light and its interaction with diverse new materials to the development of a fresh image for the feminine. Lijn has taken inspiration from incidental details both man-made and natural, mythology and poetry, science and technology. Lijn is interested in the development of language, collaborating across disciplines and making art that is interactive, in which the viewer can actively participate.

Liliane Lijn was born in New York in 1939, educated in Europe and has lived in London since 1966. She is a leading pioneer and exponent of kinetic art who in her work has experimented with light, movement, words, film, liquids and industrial materials. She had a retrospective exhibition in 2005 at the Mead Gallery, University of Warwick Arts Centre and a solo show at England & Co in 2006, Liliane Lijn: Selected Works 1959-1980. Lijn is currently working on her Solar Hills project: large-scale solar installations in the landscape, the outcome of her residency at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. In November 2008, Lijn was one of the five artists featured in the BBC1 program Let There Be Light in the Imagine series presented by Alan Yentob. Recent highlights include exhibitions at Riflemaker Gallery, 2008 the ICA, London, and Poem Game, as part of the Serpentine Poetry Marathon curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Special thanks to Irini Mirena Papadimitriou and staff at V&A.