Erin M. Riley

Gallery Affiliations: Guerrero Gallery

Region: Northeast

City / State: Brooklyn, NY

Using techniques rooted in weaving, I create images of young women in a state of undress or exposure, personal objects, and landscapes related to destruction and death. My work is the culmination of research into addiction, sexual experimentation, popular Internet culture, the effects of drug addiction, abuse, and differences in socioeconomic status. I use my own images that I have sent electronically, as well as objects I have a sexual or psychological attachment to or that have had an impact on other people’s lives, and displays of arrest, death, and addiction.

I am interested in how courtship, pornography, and sex are changing as a result of the mass sharing of these intimate moments online. I am inspired by the beauty of a woman who takes a self-portrait for her own pleasure and that of people she cares about, by everyone who gets to glimpse that moment, and by what is done with the power of that intimacy. I am most drawn to the images made for private exchange that litter the Internet.