Liza Lou: Trailer
Peer into a mysterious scene within Trailer by artist Liza Lou. In her paintings, sculptures, and installations rigorously assembled from glass beads, Lou interrogates notions of power, myth, and gender in the United States. Marshaling time itself as a material, the artist both illuminates acts of invisible labor and encourages discovery. In Trailer, an eerie narrative emerges.
On public view for the first time in a decade, Trailer is a major addition to the Brooklyn Museum’s collection. The work fills the interior of a 1949 Spartan Royal Mansion mobile trailer stationed in the Museum’s entry pavilion.
Inside, the colors are limited to replicate the allure and intensity of Hollywood film noir. Everything is rendered in glass beads, from the furniture, typewriter, and glossy men’s magazines to the guitar, guns, and shots of whiskey.
Trailer thus demands close looking—at both its intricacy and its allusions, questioning what is revealed and what is hidden.
Get closer
In Art Inside Out, a new video series from the Brooklyn Museum, Liza Lou speaks about the magic of film noir and rabbit holes of detail.
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Intrigued? Get your hands on this catalogue to learn more about Liza Lou’s shimmering vision.
From the top: Liza Lou (American, born 1969). Trailer, 1998–2000. Glass beads, aluminum, textile, wood, metal wire, plaster, rubber, found objects, electrical parts, and video (color, sound, looped), 120 × 96 × 420 in. (304.8 × 243.8 × 1066.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Sherry and Joel Mallin, 2022.24. © Liza Lou (Photo: Tom Powell Imaging)
Liza Lou: Trailer is organized by Carmen Hermo, former Associate Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Brooklyn Museum.
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