Erin
M. Riley
They // Them // Theirs
She // Her // Hers
[ID: Erin, a 35-year-old with pale skin, freckles, green eyes, and dark brown hair, looks into the camera in natural light.]
Brooklyn, NY
2021 USA Fellow
This award was generously supported by the USA Endowment Fund.
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Erin M. Riley is a visual artist based in Brooklyn. Riley earned a BFA in 2007 from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston and an MFA in 2009 from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in Philadelphia, both in Fibers. Their work is woven with hand-dyed wool using traditional tapestry techniques and incorporates imagery relating to and overlapping with sexuality, addiction, trauma, and death. This imagery is created from personal objects, screenshots, experiences, and the cacophony of life consumed and filtered through the perspective of a human who came of age on the Internet.
They are a two-time MacDowell Colony Fellow (2010, 2018) and a former artist in residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, NE, Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Riley is represented by PPOW Gallery in New York, and their work has recently shown at the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo, Gana Art Center in Seoul, and the Tang Teaching Museum in Saratoga Springs.
Portrait photo courtesy of the artist.
Reflections, 2019. Hand-woven wool tapestry on cotton warp, dimensions 100 × 78 inches.[ID: Hanging on a wall is a wool tapestry depicting a pale nude figure with tattoos in bed with a mirror behind them revealing their backside.]
Believe Me, 2020. Hand-woven wool tapestry on cotton warp, dimensions 100 × 94 inches.[ID: Hanging on a wall is a wool tapestry of a newspaper clipping reading "Shooting Victim Dies" and a gold rope chain necklace with a three-leaf clover in tricolor gold on top of a flattened cotton candy-flavored Bubble Yum wrapper.]
Jesus Calling, 2020. Hand-woven wool tapestry on cotton warp, dimensions 100 × 67 inches.[ID: Hanging on a wall is a wool tapestry of a still life of a personal bureau covered in cigarettes, bottles of water, Gatorade, Dr. Pepper, and drug paraphernalia. It has a stack of books containing Jesus Calling and How Al-Anon Works as well as cigarillo packs, many vape liquid containers, and an iPhone.]