Invisible Worlds by Liliane Lijn (b. 1939, New York, USA) explores her enduring fascination with light and its interaction with new materials. Drawing from mythology, poetry, science, and technology, Lijn creates interactive works that invite viewer participation and reflect her cross-disciplinary approach and dedication to the development of language.
For over six decades, Lijn has worked at the intersection of visual art, literature, and scientific thought, producing a wide-ranging body of work that includes sculpture, installations, painting, and film. Her practice reflects influences from Surrealism, ancient mythologies, feminism, and linguistic and scientific ideas—particularly the challenge of visualising the invisible. She explores energy and perception through experimentation with light, motion, reflection, and sound.
Before settling in London, Lijn lived in Paris and Athens, where she was part of a circle of artists and poets shaping the Kinetic Art movement—connected to both space technology and cosmic spirituality. A pioneer in kinetic sculpture, she was one of the first women to use industrial materials like plastics, prisms, and copper wire to explore themes of energy and transformation. Lijn often works in series, using repetition to test and evolve her ideas.
Her talk as part of Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions: Matter and Light at the Victoria and Albert Museum surveyed her painting, drawing, sculpture, film, and installations—focusing on her 1980s light-based sculptures and spanning work from the 1950s to today. Influenced by second-wave feminism and her own experiences, Lijn’s 1980s sculptures introduced futuristic female archetypes—part machine, part animal, part plant—made from feather dusters, synthetic fibres, piano wire, steel, and optical prisms, continuing her exploration of a new, feminine form.
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Lijn received a major retrospective in 2005 at the Mead Gallery, University of Warwick, and a solo exhibition Liliane Lijn: Selected Works 1959–1980 at England & Co in 2006. She is currently developing Solar Hills, a series of large-scale solar installations, stemming from her residency at the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley. In 2008, she featured in BBC1’s Imagine series (Let There Be Light), and more recently in exhibitions at Riflemaker, ICA London, and the Serpentine Poetry Marathon (2018). Other highlights include Spotlight (Tate Britain), A-i-R at Universe 02 (Paris, 2019), Converse Column (University of Leeds), SHE (Rodeo, London, 2020), and the 13th Gwangju Biennale (2021).
Curated by Keith Whittle in partnership with the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington
