Terry Berlier

Terry Berlier (born 1972, in Cincinnati, Ohio)^[1] is an artist and sculptor whose work addresses themes of the environment and queer practice.^[2] Her work incorporates kinetic, sound based media, video, installation, and performance to address these themes.^[3]

Berlier holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from Miami University in Ohio^[4] and a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from the University of California, Davis where she studied with Annabeth Rosen, Lucy Puls, Douglas Kahn, Mike Henderson, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Cornelia Schulz, and Conrad Atkinson.^[5] At UCD Berlier met Art History lecturer Tirza True Latimer and Director of the Nelson Gallery Renny Pritikin.  

She has taught in the Stanford University Department of Art and Art History since 2007, and is currently a Full Professor and the Director of the Sculpture Lab.^[6] She was the Director of Graduate Studies from 2022-25.

She was a volunteer for the United States Peace Corps in Jamaica from 1995 to 1997.^[7]

In 2012, she participated as an artist-in-residence at San Francisco Recology's Art At The Dump program,^[8] and since 2013 has served on its board.^[6]

Gender, joinery, and ecology are at the heart of my practice as a visual artist. I am driven by a fascination with the inchoate and the unknown, invested in how objects can be queered and their meaning altered to speak to the interdependent and the intimate. Kinetic and sound sculptures in particular, which are central to my practice, demonstrate the emotive aspects of humanness– the fallible, mundane, and repetitious. My work presents an assemblage of seemingly disparate sculptural and installation elements, which set in motion dialogues concerning wellbeing, human relationships, consumption, and survival.

An early work from 1998, Two Pan Tops Can Meet, reclaimed a homophobic saying I encountered while working as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Jamaica. The proverb “two pan tops can’t meet” was a perplexing, humorous, and perilous warning that I could not come out for fear of my personal safety. In the pan lid I discovered an everyday object that could be queered; it made sound when struck and allowed me to speak back to a heteronormative culture. This led to a series where I repurposed discarded pan lids, collaborated with composers to resound queer futures with these sound sculptures.

Using everyday and found objects in my work also allows me to raise questions about gender, as well as consumption and ecology. For the last decade, I served on the prominent Recology Artist in Residency board in San Francisco. The profound effect of being surrounded by our trash reaffirms my concerns with the environment and sustainability. Over time I have come to understand ecology and queerness as ‘strange friends,’ as both confound boundaries, reject sameness, and imagine new ways of being. Both address complex webs of biodiversity and intimate interdependence that multiply difference and reject binaries and essentialist notions of being. Both reveal that beings exist relationally. Through my creative practice I continually grapple with this dilemma: As resources shrink, how can queer ecology lend alternatives to our exploitive systems?^[9]

Berlier has 20 solo exhibitions on her CV spanning from 2000 to 2021. She has exhibited her work all over the United States, as well as Japan, Norway, and Spain.^[10]

A recent project, A Kind of Ache (2021), commissioned by and took place at The Clarice gallery at the University of Maryland in collaboration with composer Sarah Heinnes and the band The Living Earth, who played music during the show.^[11] The piece was performed at EMPAC, Experimental Media + Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, NY in 2023.^[12] In 2017 her exhibition Resounding Desire Lines was featured at the Center for New Music in San Francisco, CA.^[13] Her sculptures, designed with kinetics and interactivity, were displayed as a part of the Maker Music Festival.^[14] In 2014 at the Weston Art Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio her exhibition Time Slip displayed two of her large-scale works that represent the environment and time perception: Standard Time and Not So Solid Earth.^[15] Her exhibition Sounding Board (2012)^[16] at the Thomas Welton Art Gallery at Stanford University displayed four of her kinetic sculptures, including Play, This Side Up Handle With Care, a treehouse sculpture. During her Recology Residency in San Francisco, CA, Berlier exhibited with other artists in residency Donna Anderson Kam and Ethan Estess. her sculptures were ones that "metaphorically excavate and honor these [modern] inventions and our intertwined relationships to them."^[17] In 2012, Berlier had a solo exhibition, Even the Windmills are Weakening, at Recology AIR San Francisco aka the Dump. Here, artists create pieces using recycled materials while in residence for four months. Berlier created over seventeen new sculptures while at Recology. One of her earliest solo exhibitions that gained coverage was Open Secret (2011) at the San Francisco Arts Commission Grove Street Gallery. This exhibition featured found web photos of nuclear waste and nuclear plants as a response to nuclear issues.^[18]

Berlier has done many collaborations with other artists. Her most recent work, Pulled Apart, was featured in the University of San Francisco's Thacher Gallery.^[19] This collaboration piece interweaved mechanical movement and sound to demonstrate an exploration of human connection and identity.^[20] In 2019 she was in a group show with other artists including Mungo Thomson on an exhibition in Sacramento's Verge Gallery which was curated by Francesca Wilmott, and was also accompanied by the two-volume book, Slant Step Book: The Mysterious Object and the Artworks.^[21] In 2011, she worked on Perfect Lovers. This is a large, 30 foot long piece that symbolizes time.

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