Lili Huston-Herterich

Wuppertal this weekend, starting a project with @julika_bosch and @vincent_stange for @schwimm_oper public swimming pool as seen above in all its glory ☀️ I spent the weekend waking around thinking how much I love to explore a city surrounded by other bigger cities, where it isn’t shoved down your throat what you’re supposed to see there. I went to the mall, I saw a concert while swimming, I saw an opera, I walked the sculpture park, I wish I hadn’t seen the zoo, I went to @openground.club and ascended, I swam the pool, I lived it as much as I could! Guess I really am a second city girl at heart (Chicago/Toronto/Rotterdam energy). In Wuppertal the only thing shoved is a tragic story of an elephant falling from the Schwebebahn into the shallow Wupper tributary and surviving, which I can’t think about without shuddering. But elephants were everywhere so I shuddered along anyway

Meet Your Mask final performance at @hartwigartfoundation Proxy last weekend 🎭 A small selection of the participants of a 5-week workshop (Anya Palamartschuk, Chaelim Kwon, and Romy Day Winkel, with me in the mask of Helen Bolderman) improvised for an audience this past weekend, after having worked on finding their characters with @chunshing_au and I. Beautiful photos from @nikolalamburov of @anyapalamartschuk @_chaelim_k and @romydaywinkel doing their thing 🔥

"In 𝗟𝗶𝗹𝗶 𝗛𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗻-𝗛𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗵’s 𝘗𝘶𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘜𝘱 𝘋𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘦𝘴, 2025, the installation and performance reflect on the fear of death and the fear of talking about death. The installation includes kinetic sculpture, stage lighting, video, and sound liven the empty set, breathing life into the inanimate. The accordion-like sound gasps for air, laughs uncomfortably and sighs with relief. In Dying Livingly, Staci Bu Shea writes, “death has been outsourced for generations, our grief sanitized or quieted. I understood that death happened suddenly, or it was gradual behind closed doors, both to be feared. Talking about death always seemed to happen too early, and then too late.”⁠ ⁠ In the four-chapters of the live performance (American Yoga, Towering People, Death Bed and You Are A Stain) that accompany the artwork, Huston-Herterich performs the puppeteer for an uncertain, yet sincere puppet who takes very deep breaths while talking themselves through a crisis, describing a strange and unsettling dream, discussing their end of life wishes and singing a hallucinatory song. Typically, a marionette is innocent, trustworthy and sweet, but seemingly immune to gravity’s force and void of self-consciousness. In Huston-Herterich’s performance, we become convinced of the puppet’s animacy and sentience. ⁠ ⁠ Each of these installations has lighting that emanates from within the artworks, casting temperatures of light that feel like three orchestral seasons: spring, summer and fall." — Exhibition text by Karen Kraven⁠ ⁠ Artwork:⁠ Lili Huston-Herterich, 𝘗𝘶𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘜𝘱 𝘋𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘦𝘴, 2025. Multi-piece installation: marionette, stage top, textile & small sculpture & performance.⁠ ⁠ Images: Lili Huston-Herterich, 𝘗𝘶𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘜𝘱 𝘋𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘦𝘴 from exhibition 𝘓𝘦𝘴 𝘍𝘭𝘦𝘶𝘳𝘴 𝘥𝘶 𝘔𝘢𝘭, Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square, 2026. Photo: Lili Huston-Herterich.

REMINDER: Conscious Uncoupling: A talk with Lili-Huston Herterich and Isabelle Sully, moderated by relationship therapist Rebeka Pázmányová Thursday, April 9, 7:00–8:30PM In the lead up to Thursday’s event, former artist-in-residence Lili Huston-Herterich will be taking over our stories for the week to post snippets and insights from her pilot residency, which took place at A Tale of A Tub from September–November 2025. 🎤 REMINDER: Conscious Uncoupling: Een gesprek met Lili Huston-Herterich en Isabelle Sully, onder leiding van relatietherapeute Rebeka Pázmnáyová Donderdag, 9 april, 19.00–20.30 In de aanloop naar het evenement van donderdag neemt voormalig artist-in-residence Lili Huston-Herterich deze week onze stories over om fragmenten en inzichten te delen uit haar pilot residentie, die in september en november 2025 plaatsvond bij A Tale of A Tub. 📷: Event title rendered in ‘Tubface’, the font that Lili Huston-Herterich developed during her residency, composed of letters found within and around the network of the institution / De titel van het evenement is weergegeven in ‘Tubface’, het lettertype dat Lili Huston-Herterich tijdens haar residentie ontwikkelde, samengesteld uit letters die zijn gevonden in en rond het netwerk van de instelling.

[ENG] TALK: Conscious Uncoupling: A talk with Lili-Huston Herterich and Isabelle Sully, moderated by relationship therapist Rebeka Pázmányová Thursday, April 9, 7:00 – 8:30 PM Following on from her research ‘A System of Radical Dependency’—for which she considers the art institution as a space where dependent personal and professional relationships happen—Lili Huston-Herterich proposed to end her artist residency at A Tale of A Tub with a series of therapy sessions. During these sessions, which have taken place throughout the months following the end of the residency in November 2025, Huston-Herterich and A Tale of A Tub’s artistic director Isabelle Sully reflected on the relationship between hosting institution and artist resident, attempted to address any tensions, power dynamics and insecurities resulting from this relation, and thought about how to incorporate aftercare into institutional relationships in a practical way going forward. On Thursday, April 9, Huston-Herterich and Sully will be joined by their psychologist Rebeka Pázmányová for a public moment to close out their time together, share some insights from the sessions and rethink the residency program more broadly speaking. The event will also double as the launch for the accompanying quarterly bulletin arising from Huston-Herterich’s time at A Tale of A Tub, written by artist Amy Ching-Yan Lam. 📷: The permanent name label by the entrance to A Tale of A Tub, intended to make visible the artists who have been temporary occupants of the space since the residency program began in 2025.

A two-sided marionette called Fore and From 🎭 I’ll be performing with them next Saturday 28 March at 3pm at @oakvillegalleries for the first time since last year, where I presented the work Pushing Up Daisies in my studio at the @rijksakademie . I’ll perform the whole 40-minute piece, and will launch a new publication (an annotated treatment) there as well. If you’re in Toronto or the GTA next weekend, I would love to see you, please be in touch! (I’ve been joking recently that I’d call two children Flotsam and Jetsam, words that have been in my artist bio for a while now. I think I named Fore and From in the spirit of Flot and Jet, unborn kin)

Face for the algorithm? Nah but – Starting on February 28th, I’ll be hosting Meet Your Mask, a 5-week introductory mask-making workshop in Amsterdam at Proxy ( @hartwigartfoundation ). Excitingly, theater-maker Chun Shing Au (@chunshing_au ) will join for two sessions to offer practice-based guidance on how to use the masks participants will make. Because masks aren’t just a pretty face; masks have REAL JOBS 🎭😷🤿 Following slides show some images from previous workshops of Chun Shing, who works collaboratively with Carmen Lee as @theatredupoulet . For more information about this workshop or to sign up (student rate available!) see a link in bio, or head to @hartwigartfoundation ’s page. Image credits: [1] A test mask evading algorithmic identification [2] Theatre du Poulet, Character Mask Workshop, Kinetic Studio Dance in Halifax, Nova Scotia [3] @iffr 2026 programs being put to work on the first layer of an unfinished mask in my studio [4] Chun Shing Au & Carmen Lee, GPO BOX No. 211 (image: Daniel Amman) [5] Chun Shing Au, Encrypted Mask workshop [6] Another version of my face

Excerpts from De Koffer en het Kistje (The Coffin and the Suitcase, up at @museumjancunen until 25 January. These puppets from the archive of local Oss Poppentheater Marag debate a lot in this work, but they also sing. These are two songs from the work: The first is inspired by lyrics of a song in @eileen.myles ‘s short film The Trip (with puppets) that is public on YouTube, sung to the tune of a Dutch children’s song that @merelvdn recalled while we were recording this script. The second an excerpt from an original Marag song about the small puppet Paultje (the puppet with the small head and a couple strands of hair) and his big friend Roes. Two more weeks to see this work at @museumjancunen !

These were children who hadn’t yet lost their sense of wonder They hadn’t become unseeing, or unfeeling!

Happy to be featured in this season’s @metropolism_mag , inside and out ✨ Inside is an interview with Caitlin van der Kaap, which was initiated by her noticing a (rise?) (trend?) in puppetry in contemporary art. We talked about puppetry as a therapeutic practice, my mom’s puppets, and about making space for dissidence in times of suppression and censorship. Swipe for a detail of my contribution to the children’s activity book section, how to make large puppets to be taken to the streets (parades or protests!), inspired in part by a conversation earlier this year about puppetry in street parades. And last slide, a work in my parents living room from the same series that is featured on the cover (quilted hand-printed color photographs), happily landing home this year from @zaluckycontemporary where the series was first exhibited in 2023.

Sneak peeks of two new editions available tomorrow at @rijksakademie VIVA VIVA Art Book Fair: A heat changing mug with an expansion of a one-line script for a perfomance I did earlier this year, which includes a download to a top-secret typeface included with every purchase, and T-shirts made in collaboration with @smarirobertsson with the support of @av_corroon , spurred from a rehearsal in Smári’s studio and a conversation about a pin button they might have just imagined. Button graphics screenprinted on top of existing graphics of hand-dyed $1 t-shirts from Chicago’s Village Discount Outlet. Both are very limited editions, get them tomorrow in person or DM afterward if any are left! You will be helping me financially recover from spending all my money visiting the people I love last month ☺️💸

Three new knit works now available through @gesellschaftfueraktuellekunst For this year’s Jahresgabe at GAK, I made three different small editions (of three) made from knitted synthetic fibers. The editions vary with different distress and hole patterns, and each is a lyric from the three songs introduced in the drawings that were exhibited in the summer exhibition at the gallery. They are exclusively available through GAK, three of each either frames or unframed! A great way to support a really wonderful space I had the pleasure of working with this year. Go get em 🏃 Big thank you to @annette________________ , Jana and Maxie at GAK for their work commissioning these works this year!