Liz Rosenfeld

Liz Rosenfeld (born 1979) is an American performance, film/video and visual artist based in Berlin.

Rosenfeld was born in 1979 in New York City to parents of Jewish descent. Rosenfeld's maternal grandparents were German Jews who fled the Holocaust, settling first in Jerusalem and finally in New York City.^[1] Rosenfeld's maternal grandmother grew up in Berlin.^[2]

Rosenfeld identifies as queer and did not have difficulty coming out to their parents. Rosenfeld writes, "my queerness, much like my Jewishness, has never been an essentialist identity. Rather, both have informed me more regarding the way in which to navigate life".^[1] Rosenfeld uses they/them or no pronouns.^[2][3]

They completed studies in performance at the graduate level. In 2005, they received an MFA in Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 2007 received an MA from The Department of Performance Studies at New York University.^[4]

In 2008, Rosenfeld moved to Berlin.^[1] They say, "I came to Berlin as a queer with the desire of finding a Jewish diaspora I never knew or was always kept a secret from me, but instead I found a queer diaspora I never expected."^[2]

Rosenfeld makes experimental film, performance, written and visual artworks, addressing "questions and desires related to a queer corporal position".^[2] They were the first Goethe@LUX artist in residence with the Goethe-Institut London in 2017.^[5] Rosenfeld's films and performances have been shown internationally at museums and other venues.

In their practice, the artist "explores questions regarding the sustainability of emotional and political ecologies, past and future histories and the ways in which memory is queered."^[6] They explore cruising methodologies and take an approach to flesh as "a non-binary collaborative material" with a focus on "the potentiality of physical abundance and excess".^[7] Flesh, for them, is something that they "move with, live with, sculpt with ... something that [they're] collaborating with".^[8]

For Rosenfeld, the materiality of the body and the skin are akin to the texture of film and video, beyond simple metaphor, and the artist works with "moving images as performative bodies".^[2] The immersive environment of a planetarium, for which Rosenfeld made White Sands Crystal Foxes, merges their love for the cinematic and the performative.^[2]

Rosenfeld is part of NowMomentNow, a Berlin moving image collective, and a founding member of the food performance group Foodgasm.^[9] Rosenfeld's forthcoming coming-of-age queer feature film Foxes is co-written by filmmaker and scriptwriter Thais Guisasola.^[2]

Rosenfeld has performed in the films Ecstasie (2025, dir. Lily Baldwin),^[8] Instinct (2019, dir. Ester Martin Bergsmark, Mad Kate, Adrienne Teicher and Marit Östberg)^[10] and Mixed Messages (2017, dir. Kanchi Wichmann).^[11]

They have been outspoken against the German government's repression of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly relating to protests for Palestinian human rights following the Gaza war since October 2023 as well as against the German parliament's resolution to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism.^[12][13]

• 2022 – Rosenfeld's 360° film White Sands Crystal Foxes, conceived for a planetarium,^[14] was nominated for a Teddy Award for Best Short Film at the Berlinale^[15]
• 2022 – Shortlisted for the ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival Live Art Prize 2022^[7]

• Artist website
• Liz Rosenfeld at IMDb