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, desire, and 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 idea that mind, body and spirit co-exist and are always in search of balance.
Working spontaneously, she uncovered projections of humanity’s mental imagery which belong to the complex fluctuating movements of spirit that are the ongoing dynamism of evolutionary change. Many elements in these works later found definition through universal auguries.
White has delineated relationships about the ramifications of inaction and stagnation in her hyper-realistic paintings, and sculptures that juxtapose found-objects, making provocative, unsettling pieces, along with and collage works, like those from the human silhouette targets series.’
Her interest in the moving image and multimedia, lead her to perform, write, produce, direct several live multi-media pieces, each of which included the 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 NY’s Art Initiatives, whose title was taken from a C.G.Jung phrase, “The Light from Behind,” and serving as a steering committee member and Public Relations Chairperson for The Armory Show: 1990, a 4 day art show of 400 Philadelphia artists, White began exploring other opportunities.
Accepted into the Snug Harbor Studio Art Program on Staten Island she participated in their group exhibitions every year. One painting series incorporated natural objects as relics, making imaginative “psychic” landscapes.
During the 2000’s her 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 other places. In 2002, she received a scholarship at the Manhattan Graphics Center, and a sound residency 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 “brotherhood” in Afgani) and references to historic paintings, that illustrated something akin to thought, and were shown in GROUND ZERO at Detroit’s Museum of Contemporary Art..
Her individual show at Ch’i: An Art Space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn presented reversible paintings grounded in Chinese ink calligraphy and the psychological phenomena of “projection.”
Her 2003 presentation at the College Art Association, INVISIBLE ENERGY: ART FORM INFLUENCES IN MY WORK, diagrammed her work’s connection with archaic, Asian and Surreal techniques and philosophies; and gold leaf glyphs were painted onto natural objects and trees in the Garden of le PETIT VERSAILLES in 2015.
Upon the introduction of computer digital editing programs, she made several films — a continuation of her earlier Super 8 film work.
Many featured performance gestures developed through “AUTOMATIC TECHNIQUE’ a dance practice. These bodily served as a mode of ritualistic format often with a modus operandi that explored subjects of power and repression; sometimes drawing from ancient stories re-contextualized into meditations on the world in which we live.
The raw video was filterized into the deliberately painterly, along with rhythm, aesthetics, and storytelling, to delineate an intuitive feeling-meaning to that revealed aspects of the subjects investigated. Several series delved into archetypal energy forms based on the ancient Chinese oracle, the I Ching.
Her documentary and essay films present surreal states of actuality that reflect the collective dream-scape that belongs to us all. These were screened at numerous cultural centers, like Philadelphia’s Museum of American Art.
A solo show of her films was presented in China both in Beijing and at Shanghai’s Duloun Museum of Contemporary Art In 2004, CLOUDGATE was included in the 1st Art in Odd Places Show and BALLOON GARDEN screened at the Jersey City Museum.
Her feature length experi-mentary, NY(see), reflects New York standing as America’s cradle of immigration; the site of the 9/11 Disaster; the platform of perhaps the only genuine international city. Three immigrant artists intersect with their own artwork; New York’s cityscapes and White’s performative actions, referring to the energy fields shared between them; imparting archetypes belonging to “the artist.” It screened at 2 BOOTS PIONEER THEATRE in NYC.
In 2006 she initiated the idea, and project managed a fundraising DVD; FOR LIFE AGAINST THE WAR, AGAIN! for The NY Filmmakers CO-OP, which successfully sold to libraries and universities.
In the summer of 2007 solo shows occur at Millennium Film Workshop, and the Jersey City Museum. Several shorts screened at: Estation Indianilla in Mexico City, the MAGA Film Fest in Georgia; BYOTV in Portland Oregon.
Her reversible, see-through, paintings and installation designed for GOT’CHA were presented in Whose Afraid of Ornament? at NutureArt in Brooklyn. Some installations, like TRAVELING with NEPTUNE: PORTRAIT of my FATHER, projected video onto paintings or assemblage, such as TURQUOISE BEADS developed for the Vision Festival in 2008 and in 2007, where A STATE of MIND included a live dance by Gus Solomns Jr.
Her second show at Millennium Film Workshop in 2010, presented work with a dreaminess that skewed between the figurative and the abstract— impressions from a borderline area that simultaneously belongs to action, thought, and emotion.
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 in that same year, “everything, BUT” won a prize 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 THE KITCHEN SINK and FOOL’s GOLD: CALIFORNIA ROADTRIP in an ELECTION YEAR, her feature film essay from 2014, intermixed elderly members of from a company mining town, Zombie consumerism (brought to the fore in the 1980’s by Michael Jackson), and the Cain & Able murder story, painting 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> and its web-site was archived by THE FEMINIST INSTITUTE in 2024.
FROM 2012-15 White served as an Elected Board Member of Millennium Film Workshop. As Chair of the Archive Committee, a sale of their Archives was 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 on her work occurred with curator: Jesse Russel Brooks, Director of The Film and Video Poetry Society.
During the COVID lockdown, she 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 her 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 on October 2, 2022.
Her short, THE KITCHEN SINK was curated by Jeffrey Cypers Wright’s “& Friends,” an on-line TV show produced by HOWL! HAPPENING.
In 2022 A PHILADELPHIA STORY, was juried into the INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM FESTIVAL in DETMOLD Germany; and was also 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.