Liz Magor

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 1948, Liz Magor creates eerily lifelike replicas of everyday objects such as clothing, cardboard boxes, and ashtrays that explore mortality and local histories. Her precise copies are often combined with found objects like cigarettes, candy, alcohol, taxidermied birds, and small mementos, creating a narrative that examines how objects come into our lives and eventually become part of the vast human waste stream. These personal anxieties and small worries are folded together with social narratives in her work.

Magor's large-scale public projects feature architectural columns that resemble towering trees and rickety shacks remade in cast aluminum, creating a visual doubletake that challenges the viewer's perceptions. By resurrecting forgotten items from the past, Magor preserves the whispers of life in her artworks that function as exact copies of existence.

Magor studied at the Vancouver School of Art, Parsons School of Design, and the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Her numerous awards and residencies include the Vancouver Mayor's Art Award for Public Art, Gershon Iskowtiz Prize, Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts, Governor General's Visual Arts Award, and the York Wilson Endowment Award. Her major exhibitions have been featured at renowned institutions such as the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Venice Biennale. Liz Magor currently resides and works in Vancouver, BC, Canada.