Cosmologies runs concurrent with Collins’ participation in Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, curated by Lynne Cooke, on view at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and traveling to The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; The National Gallery of Art Canada, Ottawa; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York. This groundbreaking exhibition features a group of seminal artists noted for their pioneering contributions to textiles as an artistic medium.
Liz Collins has long challenged the boundaries of art, fashion, and design with a decades- long commitment to experimenting, innovating, and deconstructing the shape-shifting potentials of textiles. Deeply informed by counter-cultural, punk, and pop movements in fashion and its everyday role in facilitating self-expression, her practice is rooted in a queering of expectations and normative functions.
In Cosmologies, Collins materializes her ruminations on origin stories of the universe, mythologies of ethereal forces and energies imbued in objects, signs, and attitudes — the visible and invisible animation of life forces; the vibrations of motion and emotion informing intuition and unspoken communication. A visual lexicon of energy sources informed by archetypes and the esoteric semiotics of Tarot cards are revealed in a wheel of lightning bolts, broken skies, and cracked mirrors.
The works in this exhibition present an array of materials, from glittery sequins to reflective synthetics to brightly colored fibers, produced mechanically and by hand. The persistence of materials undergoing assembly, stitching, embellishments, strain, and fray unfold narratives of life cycles and transformation.
Collins highlights the motion integral to creating the works by oscillating colors in the woven designs — with some reversible, divulging the agility of patterns — the reverse image shows an index of colorful motion, crisscrossed layers, and mechanical tenacity. Through a fetishization of fabrics, Collins reveals the exciting and critical material influence that impacts our personal lives and spaces.
Liz Collins lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA and MFA in Textiles from the Rhode Island School of Design. Her solo exhibitions and installations have been exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY; the Knoxville Museum of Art, TN; AMP, Provincetown, MA; Touchstones Rochdale, UK; among others. Selected group exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art, the New Museum, Leslie Lohman Museum, Museum of FIT, The Drawing Center, BRIC, and Smackmellon — all in New York City, NY; as well as the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, CA; ICA/Boston, MA; Addison Gallery at Phillips Academy, Andover, MA; Lyndhurst Mansion, Tarrytown, NY; Longhouse Reserve, East Hampton, NY; and NoLAB, Istanbul, TR. Collins’ honors include a USA Fellowship, a MacColl Johnson Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts & Artist Relief grants, Drawing Center Open Sessions and residencies at Civitella Ranieri, Siena Art Institute, MacDowell, Yaddo, Haystack, Museum of Arts and Design, Stoneleaf, and currently she is in the Two Trees Cultural Subsidy Studio Program in Brooklyn. In 2020, The Tang Museum released “Liz Collins Energy Field”, her first major publication. Collins is included in Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, curated by Lynne Cooke, at LACMA, a show that will travel to the National Gallery of Art Washington D.C. and The National Gallery of Art Canada, Ottawa, ON, and to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. In 2025, Collins will have a mid-career retrospective titled, Liz Collins: Mischief, at the RISD Museum in Providence, RI with an accompanying monograph.