Erin M. Riley's (b. 1985) meticulously crafted, large-scale tapestries depict intimate, erotic, and psychologically raw imagery that reflects upon relationships, memories, fantasies, sexual violence, 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.

In her review of Riley's most recent solo exhibition, The Consensual Reality of Healing Fantasies at P·P·O·W, Roberta Smith of the New York Times wrote, "Her richly variegated colors and complex, arresting scenes take full advantage of tapestry’s stitch-by-stitch autonomy."

Riley received her BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions at P·P·O·W, New York; Galerie Julien Cadet, Paris, France; Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway; The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; Gana Art Gallery, Seoul, South Korea; MassArt Art Museum, Boston, MA; and UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, CA; among others. Riley is the recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship Grant, 2021 and an American Academy of Arts & Letters Art Purchase Prize, 2021 and has completed residencies at MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire and the Museum of Art and Design, New York. Her work was recently featured in 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, CT, manifesto of fragility, the 16th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, and Kingdom of the Ill at Museion, Bolzano, Italy. In late 2024, Riley will present her first solo exhibition with cadet capela, Paris, France.

On behalf of Erin, Outer Space will donate 5% of its profits from any sales of her work to a non-profit of the artist's choosing.

view Erin's full biography

Understory is comprised of images of myself at various moments throughout my life. I’ve used these preserved images within my tapestries over the years as a way of reminding myself of my existence, often juxtaposed with a version of me in present day. Weaving them small, only slightly larger than their 35mm printed size I am recreating them with the abstraction of tapestry, blurring the details and simplifying them down to an essence. I look back at images as a way of relating to a person reflected, while actively avoiding the indulgence and natural urge to forget the reality of yesterday or tomorrow. Memory is not static and I have no evidence, I have no way of relaying the tension and fear that would supersede and permeate through the daily mundanity, only images of myself on a bike or pouting on a beach. What I do have is the innate inclination to keep secret and the shame of generations that is not mine to carry but that has impacted all of the ways that I relate. Understory reflects the ongoing interest in the self portrait. A way to uncover of the self in spite of the challenges of truly knowing and still one goes through a life, some of which is depicted in images, feeling lied to by the themselves looking back at them and working to relay the truths so that we learn to face them, and stop repeating them, while repeating them.