Lois Bielefeld is a queer series-based artist working in photography, audio, video, and performance.  Working in large scale serial works, their work continually asks what links routine and ritual to the formation of identity, personhood, and the development of meaning-making. 

 

Currently settled in Milwaukee, Lois has lived on both coasts with a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (2021) and a BFA from Rochester Institute of Technology (2002). A solo exhibition of their work,  The Bedroom, was presented at Portrait Society Gallery in 2012. Their second solo exhibition at Portrait Society was Androgyny in 2015. A portfolio of images and a room-sized sound installation from this exhibition were acquired by the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art in New York. Their third major PSG exhibition was in 2016, called Neighborhood. In 2021, they exhibited To commit to memory  at PSG of which 3 video works and 10 photographs were acquired by Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2023, 3 works were acquired by the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2024, and video work from the series was shown at The National Portrait Gallery as a part of the Outwin Triennial 2022. 

 

Their work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in New York City, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Museum of Wisconsin Art, Saint Kate Arts Hotel, the Warehouse Museum and the Racine Art Museum in Wisconsin. Bielefeld has shown at The International Center of Photography in New York City, The National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC, de Young Museum in San Francisco, The Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Gastfeld Gallery in Bremen, and Dom Wein in Vienna.