1. Liliane Lijn was born on 1939 and is an American-born artist who was the first woman artist to work with kinetic text, exploring both light and text as early as 1962; and in addition, she is in all likelihood the first woman artist to have exhibited a work incorporating an electric motor.
In conversation with Fluxus artist and writer, Charles Dreyfus, Liliane Lijn stated that she primarily chose to "see the world in terms of light and energy".
Liliane Lijn was born in New York City, four months after her mother and grandmother had arrived by boat from Antwerp.
At the age of 9, her parents separated and Liliane Lijn was sent to a progressive boarding school, Hickory Ridge, before attending a more conventional school in Pennsylvania.
Liliane Lijn's mother decided to move to Lugano to be near her children.
Liliane Lijn lived with her mother and went to school in Lugano, becoming fluent in French and Italian.
Liliane Lijn left school a year and a half before graduating, precipitated by a life-changing encounter with Nina Thoeren, her former classmate, whose mother Manina Tischler was a Surrealist painter.
In 1958 Liliane Lijn studied archaeology at the Sorbonne and Art History at the Ecole du Louvre, in Paris.
Liliane Lijn had already begun a lifelong interest in unusual materials.
In 1961 Liliane Lijn lived in New York, where she first worked with plastics, experimenting with reflection, motion and light, and conducted her first research into invisibility at MIT.
Liliane Lijn frequented the world of the Beat poets and worked with the English poet Nazli Nour.
Liliane Lijn was interested in the work of other kinetic artists working with light and movement in Paris such as the Groupe de Recherches Visuelles.
Liliane Lijn is known for her drive to "re-encounter the archaic Greek as a form of Western primitivism, as a primordial field of culture and representation for contemporary techno-culture".
In 1965, Liliane Lijn began work with cone-shaped Koans which continue to this day.
Liliane Lijn began her series of rotating Linear Light Columns.
In 1974 Liliane Lijn staged the performance The Power Game, a text-based gambling game and socio-political farce for the Festival for Chilean Liberation at the RCA.
In 2005, Liliane Lijn received an Honorary Degree, Doctor of Letters, from the University of Warwick and an ACE International Artist Fellowship - a residency at the Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with NASA and the Leonardo Network.
From 2005 to 2009 Liliane Lijn developed, in collaboration with astronomer John Vallerga, Solar Hills, a large scale solar installation in the landscape.
Liliane Lijn had two solo shows in 2018, Lady of the Wild Things in Rodeo London and Cosmic Dramas in Rodeo Piraeus.
Liliane Lijn is Artist in Residence at Universe 02, Astroparticle and Cosmology Laboratory, Paris since 2017.
Liliane Lijn was commissioned by University of Leeds for a major sculpture, Converse Column, a nine-meter high kinetic text work.