Elizabeth Duffy

Elizabeth Duffy

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  • Current Work: Wearing
    • Video of Wearing / 19th c dress
  • Ongoing : Maximum Security: 50 States Wallpapers, Textiles, Drawings and Installations
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    • Security Envelope Projects
      • Neo, at the Milwaukee Art Museum
      • Apartment 2B, at DM Contemporary, NYC
      • Overlander, Hamilton Gallery, Newport, RI
      • Westbeth North Light, Westbeth Gallery, NYC
      • See Through
      • Prolonged Exposure and Repetition Delirium
      • Twin Lens Reflex, Governor's Island, NY
      • Day Job, The Drawing Center, NYC
      • Tobey Street, Providence, RI
      • Security Envelope Quilts and Drawings
      • Security Envelope Objects and Installations
      • Security Envelope Icebergs
      • Penumbra
    • Maximum Security: Quilts and Textiles
  • Insidious Objects
  • Artifacts from an Eventual Past
    • Circle Reinforcements
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      • Shard Portraits
      • Scavenger Birds and Birds of Prey
  • A Series of Minor Miracles
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  • First Steps: The Moon Belongs to Us, An installation for the Rhode Island State House, curated by Judith Tolnick Champa
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  • Curatorial: Dead Ringer at the Bristol Art Museum, RI, June/July 2019
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Inspection House
2019
Textile, wallpaper, venus flytraps, rug, slippers, embroidery and alarm
10' x 6' x 5'
This installation is named for the central watchtower— the Inspection House, in Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon—the central viewing space from which an institution keeps a watchful eye over it’s prisoners. Each of the letters in the embroidery is an aerial view of a prison, spelling out Home Sweet Home. The patterns in the wallpaper and slippers are from security envelopes from government and corporate surveillance patterns. I included the venus fly traps because of their ability to trap prey. By inserting objects and imagery about control and surveillance, I emphasize the paranoia that is part of contemporary surveillance culture and the injustices hidden in plain sight, woven into the fabric of comfortable living spaces.


All images copyright of Elizabeth Duffy, 1998-2022

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