About Kenji Liu
Kenji C. Liu (劉謙司) is a Los Angeles-based painter, public artist, and writer whose work explores history, place, and memory. His paintings and public projects often draw from archival research, community histories, and the layered cultural histories of specific places.
His work has been exhibited at the Oakland Museum of California, Descanso Gardens, and other galleries and cultural institutions, including the 2025 solo exhibition The Hall of Lost Things at Crear Studio. He has received support and recognition from the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the California Arts Council, the Tenjinyama Artist Residency in Sapporo, and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program.
Liu is also the author of the poetry collections Monsters I Have Been and Map of an Onion. He holds an MA in cultural anthropology and currently works in Cultural & Visual Arts at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center in Los Angeles.
Practice
My work is about history, place, and memory, often through an Asian American lens. I am interested both in histories that have been overlooked or erased and in the ways those histories continue to shape the present.
I often begin with a specific place, using maps, photographs, newspapers, legal documents, immigration records, letters, objects, and community knowledge to uncover its different layers. I am especially interested in the tension between official records and lived memory, and in who gets to define the dominant version of a history.
Painting gives me a way to make this material visual, visceral, and present. My background as a poet shapes how I use fragments, ambiguity, juxtaposition, and speculation. At times I use speculation to move beyond what the archive can contain, imagining other possibilities while keeping the work grounded in the larger historical, social, and ecological forces shaping a place.
Selected Highlights
The Hall of Lost Things, solo exhibition, Crear Studio, Los Angeles, 2025
You Are Here: California Stories on the Map, Oakland Museum of California
Black Walnut Chisme, public mural, Los Angeles, 2026
Cultural Trailblazer, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, 2023–24
Artist residencies at Tenjinyama, Sapporo, and Djerassi Resident Artists Program
Author of Monsters I Have Been and Map of an Onion
Selected works are also available for licensing.
