Erin M. Riley

Erin M. Riley (b. 1985) crafts meticulous, large-scale tapestries depicting intimate, erotic, and psychologically raw imagery that reflects upon relationships, memories, fantasies, and trauma. Collaging personal photographs, images sourced from the internet, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera to create her compositions, the Brooklyn-based weaver exposes the range of women’s lived experiences and how trauma weighs on the search for self-identity.

Riley received her BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Boston, MA and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art, Philadelphia, PA. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions at P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; kaufmann repetto, New York, NY and Milan, Italy; Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Hashimoto Contemporary, San Francisco, CA; Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Gana Art Gallery, Seoul, South Korea; Museion, Bolzano, Italy; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway; and Timothy Taylor, London, UK; among others. Riley’s works belong to the public collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY and the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum of Art at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; among others. She received a United States Artists Fellowship Grant in 2021, an American Academy of Arts & Letters Art Purchase Prize in 2021.