There’s nothing soft about Erin M. Riley’s tapestries, which examine hard-hitting themes such as family trauma and domestic abuse. Drawing on memory, photographs, and everyday iconography ranging from street signs and emojis to intimate tattoos and tampons, the Brooklyn-based artist untangles her own past while also examining the stories of other women. “There’s a long history of tapestry and visual narrative,” Riley says.
Born on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, she started weaving while pursuing her bachelor’s degree at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston and continued making textile handiworks to sell for extra cash through graduate school at Philadelphia’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University. But after graduation, she struggled to get her art career off the ground; she found galleries were dismissive of textiles, while traditional weavers grappled with her contemporary imagery. “I was getting pushback from both sides,” she says.
In recent years, however, perspectives have changed and the distinction between fine art and craft has significantly blurred, with once-strict hierarchies collapsing. Riley has been at the forefront of a growing cohort of artists shifting the discourse around fiber art. Earlier this year, she had her first solo show with Mother’s Tankstation in London, and in September, she will unveil her latest and largest weavings to date in a solo exhibition at New York’s P·P·O·W gallery. Included in the presentation is Road Reverberations (2024), which probes the coercive rhetoric of abusive relationships through crowdsourced quotes from survivors.
Her new creations incorporate embroidery for the first time, adding a sense of three-dimensionality and integrating another overlooked practice into her expanding oeuvre. She also hopes these pieces will further break down barriers between art and craft as well as between shame and self acceptance. “I want these works to be part of a larger conversation,” she says.