Elizabeth Duffy

Elizabeth Duffy

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  • Current Work: Wearing
    • Video of Wearing / 19th c dress
  • Ongoing : Maximum Security: 50 States Wallpapers, Textiles, Drawings and Installations
  • Maximum Security
    • Security Envelope Projects
      • Neo, at the Milwaukee Art Museum
      • Apartment 2B, at DM Contemporary, NYC
      • Overlander, Hamilton Gallery, Newport, RI
      • Westbeth North Light, Westbeth Gallery, NYC
      • See Through
      • Prolonged Exposure and Repetition Delirium
      • Twin Lens Reflex, Governor's Island, NY
      • Day Job, The Drawing Center, NYC
      • Tobey Street, Providence, RI
      • Security Envelope Quilts and Drawings
      • Security Envelope Objects and Installations
      • Security Envelope Icebergs
      • Penumbra
    • Maximum Security: Quilts and Textiles
  • Insidious Objects
  • Artifacts from an Eventual Past
    • Circle Reinforcements
    • Map Projects
    • Silhouettes
      • Shard Portraits
      • Scavenger Birds and Birds of Prey
  • A Series of Minor Miracles
  • Skin/Hair/Breath
  • Artist's Books/Editions
  • First Steps: The Moon Belongs to Us, An installation for the Rhode Island State House, curated by Judith Tolnick Champa
  • Archive
  • Curatorial: Dead Ringer at the Bristol Art Museum, RI, June/July 2019
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P is for Panopticon, Maximum Security Quilt
2016
Fabrics printed with security envelope patterns from banks and government-issued correspondence, bedding
67 x 76 inches

P is for Panopticon, Maximum Security Quilt appears to be traditional child’s alphabet quilt pattern—a grid of bordered blocks, each containing the appliquéd shape of a letter. The letterforms in this quilt are off kilter, replaced by aerial views of maximum security prisons. I found these aerial views on Josh Begley’s staggering website Prison Map http://prisonmap.com. When one prison on his site resembled an E, I wondered if I could find every letter in the alphabet in his database. I searched and began assembling an alphabet. It was devastatingly simple, with several prisons resembling S’s and many like M’s.


I cut the letter forms from fabrics printed with security envelope patterns from government and corporate correspondence, to locate funding that profits from mass incarceration. I use fabric from uniforms and dress shirts to pose questions about responsibility: individual, governmental and corporate, and bedding for the quilt back, which holds the imprint of the body.



All images copyright of Elizabeth Duffy, 1998-2023

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