Info

B.1976 in São Paulo, Brazil Currently living and working in the United States. Liliam Higa is a seeker and explorer of form. With an artistic practice of sculpting shapes from metal and clay, her work is rooted in a nomadic curiosity. Traveling to new places and experiencing new cultures are then translated into a place beyond words through building an emotional landscape of intimate three-dimensional forms and shapes. Raised within metropolitan Brazil’s Okinawan diaspora, Liliam received her BA in Fashion Design from Faculdade Santa Marcelina in São Paulo. Two months later, she accepted a scholarship from the Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts’ Visual Design Department to spend a year immersing herself into the Ryukyuan cultural heritage. During that time, she studied with masters of bashoshi paper-making, woodblock printing and large-scale analogue photo printing. Returning from Japan, Liliam relocated to New York City to pursue a career in Fashion. During fashion styling gigs, she found herself drawn to creating sculptural jewelry and accessories to compliment editorial looks. After studying silversmithing and goldsmithing at Studio 174 and Brooklyn Metalworks, her skillset expanded to incorporate traditional bench techniques, including lost wax sculpting. In 2013, Liliam launched her own accessory brand Lillot, celebrated for design that modernized the use of pearls. Her pieces were coveted by New York tastemakers and sold to a global audience. Lillot designs were featured in books by Die Gestalten Verlag, worn by Alicia Keys and Christine Barberich, and appeared in editorials for Interview, Vogue Taiwan, Marie Claire Greece and Harpers Bazaar Vietnam. Her work was shown at Onishi Gallery in NYC and NADA Art Basel Miami. Moving to Los Angeles in 2015, Liliam was immediately enchanted by new shapes of farmers market produce found in Southern California. This led her to build sculptures on plates with the additional dimension of taste. Pushed to deepen the culinary thread of her practice, she took workshops with cookbook author Sonoko Sakai and went on eco-foraging walks with fermentation expert Pascal Baudar. These practices broadened her view on how invasive or indigenous foods could be layered into a medium to convey history, emotion and context when combined through a multi-sensory experience. Unable to travel during the pandemic lockdown, Liliam honed her food-sculpture design skills in a culinary program through Matthew Kenney’s Food Future Institute that elevated vegan foods using both Classical Fine Dining and Modernist Cuisine techniques. Since then, Liliam has designed tasting menus and confections that create a dialogue between diasporic foods and fine dining. Her work with food include commissions for The Onitsuka Soho store in NYC and culinary illustration for the award-winning LAAB magazine. In 2023, Liliam returned to her motherland of Okinawa in search of connection to her own ancestors. On the remote island of Iriomote, surrounded by volcanic islands and coral structures, she found herself deeply touched by a Ryukyuan spiritual core she was never exposed to growing up. Voices spoke to her from the islands and she was listening. Returning to the USA, she relocated to South Florida and began working with stoneware and porcelain clays, hand-building objects using coiling, slab, glazing. Her current aim in this new phase is to create unique objects and sculptures deeply rooted in her Ryukyuan heritage, and through them explore a tension between holding ancient beliefs and being a continuous seeker and global citizen.