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  • Wide sheet of dyed canvas composed of two rows of tall rectangles, each one containing blocks of color and fragments of letters.
  • Detail of the artwork’s center-right. The top row features blocks of peach shades with curving letter fragments. The bottom row of blocks forms a red rectangle with a blue border.
  • Another detail shot of the center-left area, consisting of red, gray, orange, blue,  and black rectangs with gray and orange letter fragments.
  • Detail of the artwork’s center-left, showing light green, red, pink, black, blue and orange rectangles with fragments of orange, pink, and purple letters. The dye is wash-like and not uniform.
  • A zoomed-in detail of the center-right. The top row is composed of splattered orange blocks with red letter fragments. The bottom row of black, brown, cream, and pink is visible.

Pia Camil

The little dog laughed
Now On View

Maker

Pia Camil (Mexican, b. 1980 in Mexico City), (RISD BFA 2003, Painting)

Title

The little dog laughed

Year

2014

Medium

  • Hand-dyed and hand-stitched canvas

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

  • Hand-dyed and hand-stitched canvas

Dimensions

275 x 800.1 cm (108 1/4 x 315 inches) (installed, dimensions variable)

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund

Object Number

2016.3.a-z

Type

  • Paintings

Exhibition History

Art and Design from 1900 to Now
Jun 04, 2022 – Sep 01, 2026

Label copy

Mexican artist Pia Camil looks for spaces. Or, as she describes it, “the blind spots of this mass culture where the eye could actually rest.” The little dog laughed features hand-dyed canvas panels that reference the vertical billboards found in Mexican urban landscapes. Here the panels suggest what could be interpreted as “spaces” of a whole-the hand-stitched pieces as part of a larger image. Each colorful segment allows the viewer a moment of pause, though collectively the segments form a collage of commodity culture, a commentary on mass consumerism and capitalistic overuse.

-Zoë Pulley, RISD MFA 2023, Graphic Design

The Phantom of Liberty
Contemporary Works in the RISD Museum Collection
May 04, 2018 – Dec 30, 2018

Label copy

The curtain works are abstractions from billboards. In Mexico, the urban landscape has been taken over by billboards and they have become totally integrated into the landscape. For me, it was very important to begin to document and start noting where there were spaces-I call them the blind spots of this mass culture where the eye could actually rest. I began to get more involved and interested in them. I like the sense of overuse and reuse of the panels of the billboards. I have spoken to other people in different countries and it seems only in Mexico are they built this way in a vertical panel fashion, where they get reshuffled and recycled.

I wanted this curtain to work as a screen, wherever you were positioned it wasn’t this flat thing on the wall but it would block the space, you could be either inside or outside the curtain. -Pia Camil

Image use

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In copyright This object is in copyright

Tombstone

Pia Camil (Mexican, b. 1980 in Mexico City)
The little dog laughed, 2014
Hand-dyed and hand-stitched canvas
275 x 800.1 cm (108 1/4 x 315 inches) (installed, dimensions variable)
Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund 2016.3.a-z

To request new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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