A&D ANNUAL 2021

Liana Berzins

Liana Berzins’ drawing practice interrogates the boundary between fiction and reality, seeking to collapse the distinction between them through a manipulation of form, structure, and character. Her drawings expand across the pages of concertinas, fluctuating between vibrant, fully rendered scenes and transitory sketches to depict non-linear narratives featuring a cast of bizarre fictional characters. Her project ‘The Book of Nix’ follows one such character – the creature Nix – and documents stories of his encounters with the world. As the work expands into multiple chapters, Liana crafts a history around Nix that steadily displaces the boundaries of reality. By depicting multiple iterations of Nix as he is recognised within the world, across different periods of time, she draws him into a space of historical memory that is more than fictional.