About the Artist

Liz Collins is well-known for pushing the boundaries of art and design in innovative and experimental work in fabric, yarn, and other materials and techniques associated with textile media.Although Collins embraces a language of abstraction, bold colors, patterns, and symbols allude to queer and feminist references, sourcing further inspiration from interpersonal and environmental forces such as electricity, volatility, connectivity, and energy exchange.Whether in the form of textile, painting, drawing or installation, Collins frequently explores the dichotomy of structure and entropy—qualities inherent to textile that speak to the fissures present in broader architectural, political, and social structures. Processes of slowly cutting, unbinding, revealing, and rearranging subtly nod to the destabilization that takes place when small but organized acts aim to undercut rigid systems.

Liz is the first Artist in Residence at LongHouse. The LongHouse Artist in Residence studies and uses our extensive collections of plants and art—outdoor sculpture and Jack Lenor Larsen’s unique collection of American and global craft and design--and other resources to create work that explores nature and the relationship between humans and the natural world. LongHouse has a unique low-residency format: artists create most of their work in their own studio spaces, and visit LongHouse over the course of the year.Collins’s current and forthcoming exhibitions include the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Foreigners Everywhere, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, and Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, curated by Lynne Cooke, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, ON; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. In 2025, Collins will have a mid-career retrospective curated by Kate Irvin at the RISD Museum in Providence, RI, with an accompanying monograph.

Collins has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN; the Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, NY; Touchstones Rochdale, Rochdale, UK, among others. She has been featured in group exhibitions at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York, NY; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the New Museum, New York, NY; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, among others. In 2020, the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery released Liz Collins — Energy Field, the artist’s first major publication.

Collins lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received her BFA and MFA in Textiles from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Join us for Needle Sports

Work alongside Liz Collins on select Sundays through September

Stitch, knit, weave, bead, learn, chat, lounge, connect in community! Drop in, bring a project of your own, interact or simply watch. Free with admission.

Liz Collins
Rapture 1, 2020
Silk, linen and wood
61 × 75 1/2 × 2 1/4 in | 154.9 × 191.8 × 5.7 cm

Liz Collins
Sitting Room
Site-specific installation at AMP Gallery,
Provincetown, MA; 2014