A vibrant textile artwork with a glowing spiral against a dark sky surrounded by large rainbows swooping down to large snow-covered mountains stretch below.
Liz Collins, Rainbow Mountain Weather, 2024. Photograph by Patty van den Elshout. Image courtesy of The Artist and CANDICE MADEY, New York. © Liz Collins.

Liz Collins

Motherlode
July 19, 2025 - January 11, 2026
A vibrant textile artwork with a glowing spiral against a dark sky surrounded by large rainbows swooping down to large snow-covered mountains stretch below.
Liz Collins, Rainbow Mountain Weather, 2024. Photograph by Patty van den Elshout. Image courtesy of The Artist and CANDICE MADEY, New York. © Liz Collins.

Introduction

Liz Collins: Motherlode celebrates the richly varied career and work of the New York-based Queer feminist artist known for her bold abstract patterns, inventive use of materials, and radical experiments with fiber. Over the past three decades, Collins (b. 1968) has excavated deep below the surface of established ways of making, bringing to light eye-dazzling creations that disrupt the boundaries between art, design, and craft.

From her early career as a cutting-edge fashion designer to her Knitting Nation performances to her recent large-scale installations, Collins has mined the textile medium for its ability to convey the textured complexities of power and intimacy. This exhibition, the first US survey of her work, brings together an unprecedented range of material, including large-scale sculptural work, fashion, needlework, drawings, performance documentation, and ephemera produced from the late 1980s until now. 

–Curated by Kate Irvin, Costume and Textiles Department, RISD Museum

Kate Irvin

Liz Collins: Motherlode is made possible with funding from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Coby Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Robert Lehman Foundation, and the RISD Museum Associates.

RISD Museum is supported by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and with the generous partnership of the Rhode Island School of Design, its Board of Trustees, and Museum Governors.