Erin M. Riley: Weaving Contemporary Works of Art

Erin M. Riley is an American artist who lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is active in the weaving community. Her work deals with female identity and domestic issues. While studying in art school, she became involved with weaving. Through her artwork, Riley transforms the art of weaving into something beyond the preconceived mould that normal people think of when they hear the word “weaver”; she eliminates the stigma that tapestry is not regarded as “high” fine arts.

Although she initially was set on becoming a fashion designer, Erin M. Riley was captivated to tapestry after discovering the fibers department and loom room at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She was instantly attracted to the tangible and conceptual nature of tapestry, which “seemed to be the best way to use imagery and content while using textile techniques.” During her early stages of learning tapestries, Riley’s works stemmed from her struggling family and childhood. After moving, it eventually developed into something that helped her understand herself, without the narrative of family. This also allowed for her to spend time on new imagery that was about the underlying issues she felt people in her family faced.

One of these issues was the absence of Riley’s father. In the series Portrait of a Father, there are meticulously hand-woven, hand-dyed wool tapestries depicting intimate portraits of trauma conveyed through car crashes. She correlates trucks to fathers and masculinity, saying that they are less scary when they are crushed or older. Portrait of a Father 5 depicts a white semi-truck wrapped around a telephone pole on the side of the freeway. The white text in the upper left-hand corner, composed to look like closed captioning, reads, "You don't deserve my forgiveness." Riley has explained that the wreckage formed after a car accident is similar to the “scars left behind on… our bodies” after experiencing a traumatic event, such as she did after her father left her family. This is an example of how Riley presented the complex narratives existing in her mind simultaneously through her work.

Collectively, Riley’s works utilize found images of women in various scenarios, such as surviving domestic abuse and experiencing sexual pleasure. These images, just like the rest of Riley’s works, are sourced imagery that she finds online through Google searches, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. In Bruises, a female in a light blue, white polka-dotted blouse is looking upward to expose her neck, which is bruised. There is also some bruising near her left breast. The top half of her face is omitted from the piece; overall, her face lacks any definite features — it is completely blank. In another work, Undressing 3, the moment in time when a woman is about to remove her dark blue bra is captured; she has just unclasped the hooks and is arching her back provocatively, as if someone — perhaps a lover — is watching. The image is zoomed into the back of her midsection so that the viewer can focus on the action happening: her act of undressing. However, Bruises and Undressing 3, like her other works depicting women, are not portraits; these images are cropped and fragmented, helping the viewer to perceive them as bodies rather than specific people.

One of Riley’s more explicit – and controversial – series is Year of Porn, which consists of woven porn stills. These images are not as random as one would assume; they are screenshots that Riley takes when masturbating at the moment that she orgasms. This series differs from the self-documentation she has created in past works; instead, it records her own behaviors, which in turn shines a light on society as a whole: searching online for porn has become part of today’s culture. Riley has incorporated aspects from the online players she uses to watch the film – such as the play button, rating bar, and time stamp – as a reminder of how the erotic material is consumed. These candid tapestries give the pornography an odd warmth and coziness rarely associated with erotica, but their artist sees some parallels between weaving and video: “Weaving works within a pixel-like framework has some similarities. Overall it becomes simplified and more low-tech digital with hand-dyed wool yarn.”

Moreover, by weaving crashed cars, female nudes, and porn stills into breathtaking tapestries, Erin M. Riley lifts the most intimate moments—the ones that society likes to keep out of sight—to the realm of art. For a long time, weaving has been viewed as an art that is ancient and traditionally “feminine.” Riley transforms the art form by utilizing traditional methods in order to create something that is modern and provocative. Both her unique content and her contemporary approach elevate a traditional medium, such as textiles and tapestry art, into something so much more.