Elizabeth Demaray is an interdisciplinary artist who lives in Brooklyn, NY. Working in the fields of art and technology, new media and eco art, Demaray knits sweaters for plants, cultures lichen on the sides of skyscrapers in New York City and manufactures alternative forms of housing for hermit crabs, out of plastic. With the engineer Dr. Qingze Zou, she is currently creating the IndaPlant Project: An Act of Trans-Species Giving in which she is building light-sencing robotic supports for houseplants. These moving floraborgs allow potted-plants to roam freely in a domestic environment, in search of sunlight and water.
Writing in a catalogue essay on her work, Richard Kline of the Aldrich Museum states “Demaray provokes complex questions concerning memory, knowledge, and the collaborative cognitive process that exists between artist and viewer, while making a body of work that has consistently confounded expectations by creating connections between diverse and often contradictory bodies of knowledge.”
Education
Demaray received a BA in Cognitive Psychology form the University of California at Berkeley in 1992, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1998, and received a Masters in Fine Art form the Department of Art Practice at the University of California at Berkeley in 1999.
Awards
Demaray is the recipient of the 2002 National Studio Award at the New York Museum of Modern Art, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts NYFA Fellowship in Sculpture, the 2003 Aldrich Emerging Artist Award at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, CN, the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation Award, the Emerging Artist Fellowship Award at Socrates’ Sculpture Park, the Art Omi Residency Award, the Altoids/ New Museum Curiously Strong Purchase Award, the Headlands Center for the Art California Artist in Residence Award Fellowship, the Sauza Tequila Bay Area Purity Award and the Headlands Center for the Arts Post Graduate Studio Award Fellowship.
Exhibitions
Her work has been exhibited at the the New York Museum of Modern Art / P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the New Museum, New York, DADAPost, Berlin, the M.H. deYoung Memorial Museum, San Francisco, the California Museum, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the University Art Museum at the University of California at Berkeley, the Project Space at the Headlands Center For The Arts, the Historic Nike Missile Site at the Marin Headlands, Arthouse, Austin TX, Consolidated Works, Seattle WA, and the Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield CN.