Born in New York City, Liza Lou emerged in 1996 when her room-size sculpture, Kitchen was shown at the New Museum in New York. Representing five years of solo labor, this ground breaking work, now in the Whitney Museum's permanent collection, utilized glass beads as an index of intensive labor and it engaged the materiality and social consciousness that continues to underscore her practice today.

Lou has exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Fondation Cartier, France, Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Lou’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Museum Kunst Palast, Düsseldorf; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Norway; Fundacio Joan Miró, Barcelona; SCAD Museum of Art, Georgia; Aspen Art Museum, Colorado; the Bass Museum of Art, Miami and the Neuberger Museum of Art, New York. Her work has also been featured internationally at the 5th Biennale de Lyon d'art Contemporain, France; Taipei Biennial, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan and ARS 01, KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki.

In 2005, Lou moved to South Africa, where she established a studio with Zulu beadworkers. Today she divides her time between her studios in Los Angeles and KwaZulu-Natal. Lou is the recipient of a 2013 Anonymous was a Woman Award and she is a 2002 MacArthur Fellow.