Elizabeth Duffy

Elizabeth Duffy

  • News
  • Current Work: Wearing
    • Video of Wearing / 19th c dress
  • Ongoing : Maximum Security: 50 States Wallpapers, Textiles, Drawings and Installations
  • Maximum Security
    • 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
    • Map Projects
    • Silhouettes
      • Shard Portraits
      • Scavenger Birds and Birds of Prey
  • A Series of Minor Miracles
  • Skin/Hair/Breath
  • Artist's Books/Editions
  • First Steps: The Moon Belongs to Us, An installation for the Rhode Island State House, curated by Judith Tolnick Champa
  • Archive
  • Curatorial: Dead Ringer at the Bristol Art Museum, RI, June/July 2019
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Maximum Security Massachusetts / Installation in "Domestic Space" at Wheaton College
2021
Wallpaper made from the aerial view of the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Massachusetts, mirror, braided rug dress, mid-century couch, braided rug, mirrored table, dandelion necklace
108 x 104 x 65 inches

I made this installation as a kind of time capsule of my experience growing up in Massachusetts. Emphasizing repeating circular patterns, I point to labor patterns, patterns of behavior and the cyclical nature of time. Patterns of labor are manifest in the braided rugs made by anonymous women to avoid going bat shit crazy. The rug on the floor has a blood red center. The dress is made from braided rugs likely made from worn dresses. The wallpaper is a repeat pattern of the aerial view of the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center, a maximum security in Massachusetts. Mirrors throughout reference the panopticon, a surveillance system that encourages self regulation. Finally, the detail of the dandelion necklace has both leaf dagger and blossom, suggesting a precarious balance between entrapment and escape.


All images copyright of Elizabeth Duffy, 1998-2022

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