ELIZABETH DUFFY: WEARING
September 18 - October 23, 2021

The Arts Center at Duck Creek is pleased to announce Elizabeth Duffy: Wearing, open to the public on September 18, and on view through October 23, 2021. A reception for both Elizabeth Duffy and Claire Watson will be held on September 18 from 5-7 pm. Gallery hours are Thursday-Sunday from 2-6 pm and by appointment.

In this exhibition, Elizabeth Duffy focuses on the repurposing of woven rag rugs, a tradition dating back to Colonial American culture: “These rugs, made from moth-eaten coats, worn blankets and clothing, reveal the tread of humanity going about their daily lives. I unbraid each rug, then press and sew the strips into cloth. The unbraiding reveals a myriad hidden patterns and exuberant hues. Lines of dotted holes indicate the years of tread marks eroding the fabric. Leopard-like spots of dirt pressed into the exposed parts of the rugs reveal human movement through time…The process of making these is something like an excavation, uncovering what the rugs hide in between the braids, while admiring the craft and labor of each anonymous maker.”

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication produced by the artist. The catalogue essay, written by Carina del Valle Schorske, states "Aesthetic labor is not the same as domestic labor or wage labor—Elizabeth Duffy enjoys the freedom of design. The freedom to transform a utilitarian object into a Rothko-like tapestry of sunshine and sky blue. But she does not articulate this freedom as an escape from her source material. In fact, she leaves the connection explicitly intact, so that, if you try to wear the dress, you’re held by a coiled braid to the rag rug it once was. Sometimes this connection seems punishing, a reminder of all the ways so-called women’s work has tied us down. But sometimes the connection seems umbilical, nourishing, the only possible technology for staying alive."

Wearing: Tent is the centerpiece of the exhibition, made in 2020 during the artist’s residency at Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. While hiking near Ucross, Duffy observed the remnants of tipi rings, patterns of stones left by indigenous people in the High Plains. The braided rugs and tipi rings spoke to her fascination with home and security, both vestiges of communities and their histories. Shortly before the residency was cut short due to the pandemic, she fashioned a tent out of rug remnants, pitching in on a nearby bluff. The work speaks “about displacement, humility, and getting by at a time when everything felt upended and off-kilter.”

Elizabeth Duffy has exhibited her work widely including at the Drawing Center, The RISD Museum. the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, White Columns, Wave Hill, and DM Contemporary. She has held residencies at the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Sirius Art Centre in Cobh, Ireland, VCCA, Jentel and Ucross. Duffy is the recipient of awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, where she was awarded grants in both Sculpture and Craft in 2019. Her work has been written about in the New York Times, Art News, Art on Paper, the Boston Globe, the Village Voice, and many other publications. She has curated exhibitions including Dead Ringer at the Bristol Art Museum and Office Space.

For more information about Elizabeth Duffy’s work, please visit www.elizabethduffy.net