LILI WHITE has been exhibiting her works in shows in the United States and abroad after she received at B.F.A.from the University of Pennsylvania and graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with a four-year painting certificate. Her work has been called “a magical act,” and one such project undertaken to illustrate this was THE DREAMING: A SLEEPOVER RESEARCH PROJECT at Shofuso, The Japanese House & Garden in Philadelphia, where she sleep overnight and recorded her dreams for artistic use.
Her work enlists the tenets of Surrealism in its philosophical stance regarding war and desire, and in its techniques of frottage and automatism.
Her content highlights nature and spirit, myth, dreams, archetypal imagery, psychology, language, and the shared concerns of humanity, to express the co-existence of mind, body and spirit are and their search vorbalance.
Working spontaneously, White depicts mental imagery from the complex fluctuating movements of spirit that are the ongoing dynamism of evolutionary change. Many images in these works find”definition” through universal auguries.
White has delineated relationships about the ramifications of inaction and stagnation in her paintings, and sculptures and collage works, like those from the human silhouette targets series making provocative, unsettling pieces, that have addressed the psychological phenomena of “projection.”
Her interest in the moving image and multimedia, lead her to perform, write, produce, direct several live multi-media pieces, that included the work and performance participation of over a dozen actors, poets and dancers.
After exhibiting in Philadelphia galleries, universities, and cultural centers; including individual painting shows at Villanova University and Race Gallery; curating several group shows, one through NYC’s Art Initiatives was used a C.G.Jung phrase, “THE LIGHT FROM BEHIND” as a title. She served as a steering committee member and Public Relations Chairperson for ART at The Armory Show: 1990, a 4 day art show of 400 Philadelphia artists.
Accepted into the Snug Harbor Studio Art Program in the mid-nineties, she participated in their group exhibitions every year. One painting series incorporated natural objects to make “relic-objects” and similar larger scaled works were named “psychic” landscapes.
During the 2000’s studio work was curated into group shows at CERES GALLERY, MARYLAND FEDERATION of the ARTS, among others. Residencies occurred at the CARTER BURDEN STUDIO RESIDENCY, CHASHAMA, and at other spaces. In 2002, she received a scholarship at the Manhattan Graphics Center, and a sound residency for her video work, administered through MOMENTA ART at Brooklyn’s The Outpost.
The paintings from 2001 made at PS122’s year long residency carried the theme of 9/11. These incorporated poems from NYC’s poets, glyphic words from other cultures (such as Afgani for “brotherhood”) and references to historic paintings, to illustrated something akin to thought. They were included in GROUND ZERO at Detroit’s Museum of Contemporary Art.
DEPARTURE, a one-person show at Ch’i: An Art Space in 2003 at Williamsburg, Brooklyn presented reversible paintings grounded in Chinese ink calligraphy of four different evolutionary styles of the word “to depart.”
Her expository lecture INVISIBLE ENERGY: ART FORM INFLUENCES IN MY WORK, at the
2004 College Art Association Conference diagrammed her work’s connection with archaic, Asian and Surreal techniques and philosophies. In 2015, archaic Chinese gold leaf glyphs were painted onto natural objects and trees in the Garden of le PETIT VERSAILLES.
Upon the introduction of computer digital editing programs, she made several films — a continuation of her earlier Super 8 film work.
In the late 1990’s, her gestural performances were developed through “automatic technique,” a dance practice that arrives at the essence of form. The raw video was filterized into an aesthetic of the deliberately painterly, along with rhythm, and storytelling, presenting an intuitive feeling-meaning on the investigated subjects.
These exercises in self and counter self-imagining served as a mode of ritualistic format that explored subjects of power and repression; sometimes drawing from ancient stories re-contextualized into meditations on the world in which we live. Several series delved into archetypal energy forms based on the I CHING, an ancient Chinese oracle.
Her documentary and essay films present surreal states of actuality that reflect the collective dream-scape that belongs to us all. These screened at numerous cultural centers, such as Philadelphia’s Museum of American Art, and one-person shows were presented in Beijing and at Shanghai’s Duloun Museum of Contemporary Art, in China. In 2004 CLOUDGATE was included in the first Art in Odd Places Show and BALLOON GARDEN looped at the Jersey City Museum.
Her feature length experimental documentary NY(see), reflects New York City standing as America’s cradle of immigration, site of the 9/11 Disaster and as platform of perhaps the only genuine international city. Three immigrant artists intersect with their own artwork; New York’s city-scapes and White’s performative actions, referring to the energy fields shared between them, and imparting archetypes belonging to “the artist” as a society member. It screened at 2 BOOTS PIONEER THEATRE in NYC.
White initiated and project managed a fundraising DVD FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR, AGAIN! for The NY Filmmakers CO-OP in 2006, which successfully sold to libraries and universities.
In the summer of 2007 solo shows occur at Millennium Film Workshop and the le Petit Versailles Garden. Shorts screened at: Estation Indianilla in Mexico City, the MAGA Film Fest in Georgia; and BYOTV in Portland Oregon.
Her double-sided, see-through mylar paintings and an installation designed for GOT’CHA were presented in Whose Afraid of Ornament? at NutureArt in Brooklyn. Some installations, projected video onto paintings or assemblage such as TRAVELING with NEPTUNE: PORTRAIT of my FATHER or TURQUOISE BEADS developed for The Vision Festival in 2008, and in 2007’s A STATE of MIND which included a live dance by Gus Solomns Jr. in that environment.
Her second show at Millennium Film Workshop in 2010 presented work with a dreaminess skewing between the figurative and the abstract— impressions from a sub-surface, borderline area.
Her film, STUFF of our DREAMS was one of eleven finalists in the Appropriation Alliance Critical Remix Festival: Oil and War! held in Fresno, California in 2011. And “everything, BUT” won for BEST FILM PROMOTING (agricultural) SUSTAINABILITY at 3—A Short Short Film Fest in South Bend Indiana.
Many cinematic works connect news-media issues to scientific facts, personal to mythic stories, film and art histories, and other art forms to present a holistic view of their chosen theme, such as S/tr:w/EET WALK or
FOOL’S GOLD: CALIFORNIA ROADTRIP in an ELECTION YEAR her feature film essay from 2014. Its edit intermixed elderly members from TRONA a CALIFORNIA company mining town, Zombie consumerism (brought to dance form by Michael Jackson in the 1980’s) and the Cain & Able murder story, to paint a tableau portrait of American “greed”. It was granted a NYSCA finishing funds award.
In 2011 her ANOTHER EXPERIMENT BY WOMEN FILM FESTIVAL (aka AXW) was granted a Fractured Atlas Fiscal Sponsorship and a 2011 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council‘s Manhattan Arts Council Grant launched it into development.
After having run live screenings with 4 shows per year for 10 years, the COVID pandemic brought it to a close. Yet, it has maintained an online presence with free, curated shows at < http: axwonline.com >
Its original web-site was archived by THE FEMINIST INSTITUTE in 202 on their web-site.
FROM 2012-15 White served as an elected Board Member of Millennium Film Workshop. As Chair of the Archive Committee, the Archives were sold to NYC’s MoMA.
IN 2018, her work was part of the CUBED LUMINOUS show at the Pensecola Museum of Art.
In 2019, IMAGINING BACKWARDS: a public dialogue with Lili White took place with the curator and Director of The Film and Video Poetry Society, Jesse Russel Brooks.
During the COVID lockdown, White wrote scripts & stories—THE PINK STONE and CAT MOTHER.
In 2021 she was awarded a City Artist Corps Grant to do a live reading with 20 actors of te magic-realism, feature film script CAT MOTHER, at an East Village garden, during the pandemic.
The paintings from CAT MOTHER: a picture book with a magical story were displayed at NY Public Library’s TOMPKINS SQUARE branch where she delivered a lecture-presentation about its creation and influences in October 2022.
Her short, THE KITCHEN SINK was curated by Jeffrey Cypers Wright, into “& Friends,” an on-line TV show produced by HOWL! HAPPENING.
In 2022 A PHILADELPHIA STORY was juried into the INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL in Drtmold, Germany; and was included in Austria’s ArtFem.TV collection of women filmmakers by Evelin Stermitz in 2020. Other shorts were screened at the FOTOGENIA (2022) Film Festival in Mexico City, in 2024’s Cinestesya Film Festival in Portugal, and as installation in Tkaranto Wiigwaasabak East to West; curator: Vera Kabo Tse; in Toronto in 2025.
Her recent pastel works, many based in the 2025 Los Angeles wildfire disaster were reviewed by Lee Klein in the VILLAGE-STAR July Issue. One such work was juried into BENDING THE ARC (an Affordable Art Fair) by Claire Koelling, Senior Exhibition Manager at Gagosian Gallery for Perry Lawson Fine Art in Nyack NY in 2026. Her video on the same subject matter was included the DORADO 806’s CALIFORNIA DREAMING show in LA.
Her target, 1st AMENDMENT, first curated by Carolyn Radcliff in the DEMOCRACY show at the Theatre for the New City in 2024, was juried by Meredith Stern into WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS… at the Bristol Museum in Rhode Island in 2026.