Liz Collins

Rainbow Mountain Moon & Rainbow Mountain Weather

In the past year, several tapestries made in the TextielLab found their way to the Venice Biennale. Two of them were by American artist Liz Collins. Rainbow Mountain: Moon and Rainbow Mountain: Weather hung on either side of a corridor in the central pavilion as part of the exhibition ‘Foreigners Everywhere’. Together, these enormous fabrics measuring more than 3 by 5 metres form a single image. In it, numerous colourful rainbows rise from snowy mountain peaks against a threatening sky. Collins describes the image as a “fantasy of a queer Utopia that is just out of reach”. This fantasy is enhanced by a moon composed of pink circles and ball lightning: a queer world, depicted here as a colourful natural phenomenon in a rugged landscape.

The woven fabrics combine cotton, linen, mohair, acrylic and recycled PET yarn. The series also includes a third, slightly smaller tapestry, entitled Rainbow Mountain: Storm. This was shown in Collins’ solo exhibition, ‘Lightning Wheel’, at Candice Madey Gallery in New York.

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