Elizabeth Duffy
Maximum Security
In Memory of Kalief Browder: Maximum Security, Rikers Island, 2016
Elizabeth Duffy
Maximum Security Throughout her career Elizabeth Duffy has mined “the material artifacts of daily life,” finding meaning in the ordinary. Since 2009 she has used the data protection patterns found on the interiors of security envelopes to explore ideas about privacy, protection, and transparency. Duffy applies these patterns to fabrics and wallpaper and creates immersive installations that have included curtains, clothing, upholstered furniture, embroideries, quilts, drawings and other objects. Expanding her appropriation of data protection patterned fabric and wallpaper, Duffy’s current project, Maximum Security, draws a connection between prison designs and domestic quilts to pose questions about our culture of incarceration. After seeing aerial views of prison complexes the artist was struck by their resemblance to traditional quilt patterns and their shared common vocabulary of symmetry, geometry and repetition, often with shapes that radiate from a central axis. She also found conceptual connections, snd has observed: Quilts immediately bring to mind ideas of home, comfort, and security… As heirlooms they carry narratives that are otherwise forgotten. Bringing these two seemingly polarized forms together allows me to highlight the costs born by societies deeply invested in incarceration. By making works that meld homespun process with information hidden from the public sphere, I am drawing attention to our society’s increasing erosion of private space and our collective comfort in incarcerating a significant percentage of our population.
Spike Island is a star-shaped former Irish prison once known as “Ireland’s Alcatraz.” Duffy’s Spike Island quilt is based on the repetition of the prison’s plan, which closely resembles a traditional star quilt block. Roughly the size of a king bed sheet, this quilt is pieced from fabrics printed with security envelope patterns, fragments of uniforms and dress shirts, calico, bedding and buttons. Its overall cheeriness suggesting domestic comfort offers an interesting counterpoint to the darker implication. To the inmates who live there, prisons are domestic spaces, with little comfort involved. P is for Panopticon, Maximum Security Quilt is based on a traditional child’s alphabet quilt pattern—a grid of bordered blocks, each containing the appliquéd shape of a letter. In Duffy’s version each letter of the alphabet is represented by an aerial view of a maximum security prison. In searching for all twenty-six letters Duffy found it surprisingly easy to source a prison design for each letter of the alphabet; in fact, she found multiple examples. The title refers to the panopticon—a type of institutional building introduced by the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. Its circular design allowed a centrally located watchman to observe all prisoners without being seen, keeping the incarcerated under a constant state of perceived surveillance and instilling a sense of paranoia and behavior control. In Memory of Kalief Browder: Maximum Security, Rikers Island is a quilt based on the plan of the Rikers Island jail complex in New York City. Duffy has used a king-size bed sheet as the backing, extending the quilt’s size to the dimensions of a solitary confinement cell—six by eight feet. The addition of the white sheet draped along one side suggests a funeral shroud or a white flag of surrender. Duffy made this quilt in memory of Kalief Browder, a young man who spent three years at Rikers Island, two of them in solitary confinement. Accused of stealing a backpack, he was never convicted and was ultimately released. Unable to adjust
Values Study: Florence ADX (a, b, c), 2016
to life after his incarceration, he took his own life in June 2015 and has since become a symbol of our broken criminal justice system. Duffy’s use of unraveled fabric to reveal the “X” and “O” pattern of the prison design is especially poignant, referencing both the random chance associated with games like tic-tac-toe (also a popular quilt pattern) and the suggestion of a life torn apart. Values Study: Florence ADX offers a composite view of a super maximum security prison complex in Florence, Colorado. The work consists of three crib-sized quilts that incorporate design elements from traditional “hugs and kisses” and fan quilts. The dominant shape in two of the quilts resembles a child’s drawing of a house, which is ironic. “Supermax” facilities like Florence represent the most secure levels of incarceration in the penal system, with 23-hour single-cell confinement as the norm. Arranged from left to right, the background fabrics of the three quilts create a grey-scale from lighter to darker shades. Duffy plays with the loaded meaning of the word “values,” perhaps implying that we should take a closer look at our common societal values. The artist reveals some of her sources for the six quilts on display by including aerial views of the prisons they represent. These framed prints, along with the quilts, are hung over data protection patterned wallpaper that envelops the gallery, creating an overall first impression of hominess and causing the formerly neutral gallery to read as a domestic space. But a closer consideration of these objects will lead visitors to question how we define privacy, what we protect, and why. The initial comfort we feel is disrupted by Duffy’s intervention that mixes ideas about public prisons and private spaces. If visitors find the experience somewhat unnerving, that is exactly the point. Mary Birmingham Curator
P is for Panopticon, Maximum Security Quilt, 2016
Works in exhibition Spike Island, 2015 Fabric printed with security envelope patterns from banks, calico, uniforms, bedding 75 x 60 inches P is for Panopticon, Maximum Security Quilt, 2016
Fabric printed with security envelope patterns, bedding 76 x 67 inches
Rikers Island Pul-e-Charkhi, Kabul, Afghanistan Florence ADX, part 1 Florence ADX, part 2 Florence ADX, part 3 Spike Island Framed archival pigment prints 11 x 8 ½ each
In Memory of Kalief Browder: Maximum Security, Rikers Island, 2016
Fabric printed with security envelope pattern, king-size bedsheet 72 x 96 inches
Values Study: Florence ADX (a, b, c), 2016
Three crib-size quilts Fabric printed with government and bank issued security envelope patterns, bedding, uniforms, cotton 48 x 54 inches (each)
Wallpaper, 2016 Pigment print of security envelope pattern on vinyl laminate Dimensions variable
Elizabeth Duffy
Maximum Security APRIL 17 – JUNE 26, 2016 Elizabeth Duffy is a multidisciplinary artist whose work engages practices of process-based drawing, installation, sculpture and photography. Her work is influenced by feminist art, an itinerant way of life, and the confluence of art with everyday life. Duffy has exhibited widely including at the Drawing Center, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, The Milwaukee Art Museum, White Columns, Elizabeth Harris Gallery, Wave Hill, The Islip Museum, Hunter College Leubsdorf Gallery and Muriel Guépin Gallery. She has held residencies at the Bogliasco Foundation/Liguria Center for the Arts and Humanities in Bogliasco, Italy, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council on Governors Island, the Corporation of Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, and Ragdale. She is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and the Sirius Art Centre in Cobh, Ireland. Duffy’s work is in the collections of Deutsche Bank, Fidelity Investments, the Heard Museum, The Milwaukee Art Museum, Dartmouth College Rauner Special Collections Library, and numerous private collections. Her work has been written about in the New York Times, Art News, Art on Paper, the Boston Globe, the Village Voice, and many other publications. She received her BA from Rutgers College and her MFA from CUNY Brooklyn College. She lives and works in Providence, RI and teaches in the Art Department at Roger Williams University.
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