Liz Collins x 4Spaces x RISD Museum
This summer, the RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island, opens Motherlode - the first U.S. survey of artist Liz Collins’ expansive and genre-defying work. On view from July 19, 2025, to January 11, 2026, the exhibition presents over 80 pieces spanning three decades of creative experimentation across textiles, fashion, installation, and performance.
Motherlode is more than a retrospective: it is a bold celebration of queer feminist expression, material storytelling, and the transformative power of fiber art. Curated in close collaboration with the artist, this landmark exhibition reflects the RISD Museum’s ongoing commitment to artists who challenge and expand the boundaries of art and design.
Liz Collins is a Brooklyn-based artist and designer whose genre-defying work spans textiles, performance, fashion, installation, and activism. A graduate and former professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, she has long challenged boundaries between visual art and material design, often through the lens of queer feminist thought and environmental awareness.
Employing a wide range of materials - from natural fibers to synthetic threads - Collins creates vivid, immersive environments characterized by dynamic patterns, inventive structures, and emotional intensity. Her works often envelop the viewer in vibrating color fields, exploring the thresholds between painting, fiber art, and spatial installation. This cacophonic play of optics, texture, color, and scale reflects her experience of the world as a place of stupendous wonder and cosmic energy.
Collins’ early success as a knitwear designer led to the launch of a pioneering fashion label before she fully expanded into the visual arts. Over the past three decades, she has developed a deeply political and tactile artistic language - one that reclaims textile as a powerful tool for storytelling, resistance, and connection. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, and is held in major museum collections around the world. Motherlode is the first exhibition to present the full arc of her artistic evolution.
Motherlode is the first comprehensive U.S. exhibition of Liz Collins’ work, showcasing over 80 pieces that span her expansive and experimental career. On view from July 19, 2025 to January 11, 2026 at the RISD Museum, the show presents a rich survey of Collins’ visual language - from radical fashion and early knitwear to monumental wall hangings, fiber-based installations, protest performances, and delicate needlework.
Curated by Kate Irvin in collaboration with the artist, the exhibition not only highlights Collins’ aesthetic evolution but also her deep commitment to queer feminist thought and collective expression. A special salon-style space within the exhibition - co-curated with RISD students - presents works by queer artists across generations, further rooting Motherlode in community and dialogue.
Accompanied by a monograph published by Hirmer, Motherlode is more than an exhibition: it’s an immersive tribute to materiality, emotion, and resistance through art.
(Printed Carpet: Cave)
For the Motherlode exhibition at the RISD Museum, Liz Collins collaborated with textile innovators ZigZagZurich and 4Spaces to create two custom-designed interior works: a signature wallpaper and a specially printed carpet, both integral to the spatial and emotional experience of the show.
The Mischief wallpaper, produced in Pavilion Gray, stretches across 43 panels to create a textured, rhythmic environment — echoing Collins’ aesthetic of layered color, movement, and disruption. Paired with a fully customized printed carpet design, these pieces transform the exhibition space into a tactile landscape, inviting visitors to not only view Collins’ art but to be fully immersed in its atmosphere.
These contributions reflect the shared ethos of Collins and ZigZagZurich: bold design, craftsmanship, and the seamless fusion of art and textile.
(Wallpaper: Mischief)
RISD Museum: A Space for Art, Education and Experimentation
Founded in 1877, the RiSD Museum is part of the Rhode Island School of Design and holds a unique position at the crossroads of art, design, and education. Its mission goes beyond traditional curation it's a place that fosters dialogue, challenges norms, and promotes inclusive, interdisciplinary engagement with the arts. With a collection spanning ancient to contemporary works, the museum has consistently supported artists who push material and conceptual boundaries. This summer, it takes that mission a step further with Liz Collins: Motherlode the first U.S. survey of Collin's work. True to RISD's commitment to expanding perspectives, this exhibition invites visitors to experience art as emotion, politics, community, and power - woven together through decades of fearless creation.