Julie Libersat

BIO

Julie Libersat is a new media artist and art educator whose work explores themes of home, utopia and disorientation through installations, videos, mazes and puzzles. Born in Kerala, India and raised in Philadelphia PA, Libersat received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2003. Libersat has exhibited in the US and abroad including shows at the Dallas Contemporary Museum, Currents New Media Festival, School 33 in Baltimore MD, and the Center for Art and Culture in France. She has received a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Grant, the 2014 CADD FUNd grant and the Velma and Davis Dozier Travel Grant from the Dallas Museum of Art. She is currently pursuing an MA in Art Education as an Onstead Masters Fellow after recently completing an MFA in New Media from the University of North Texas. Her research connects spatial theory, locative media technology, and contemporary art practice to provide new connections with art education and mobile pedagogy. She has presented at the 2014 National Art Education Association Conference and published in the 2016 July issue of Studies in Art Education.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Travel and the idea of home have become central to my work as I travel and question my own relationship to location. Feeling simultaneously at home and out of place, I use navigation motifs and transportation as both metaphor and process. “Getting lost” allows me to highlight the ways in which the built environment directs orientation and cultural values. That is, as we construct spatial meaning around the buildings and places occupied within memory, dreams and imagination, our cities, neighborhoods and buildings reflect our personal, cultural and political histories and imaginaries.

Through architectural interventions, installations, and interactive projects, I investigate our embodied perception of space—our lived, perceived, and conceived experience of space. I strive to make immersive, interactive, and participatory environments that engage viewers and compel them to observe ways in which space is socially and culturally produced. I use transportation as a metaphor and process, a device to assist in time or space travel, making it possible to have a spatial exchange or new perspective. I utilize games and play to create space that welcomes participation and experimentation with roles that are fluid and outcomes, undetermined. Using an interactive game structure disrupts and reorients viewers to take on new roles within the landscape and seeks to assist them in finding a critical and reflective perspective.

2016 Participant