WORK

WORK CURRENT ABOUT CV CONTACT

If it was a snake it would've bit me (detail)

2025

66 × 70 cm
quilt, bedsheets from my late grandmother’s house, other secondhand textiles including
Indonesian batik and ikat woven textiles, red thread, plastic heart beadsIf It Was a Snake It Would’ve Bit Me is a map of my grandmother’s home, reconstructed from memory. The title comes from a Southern US expression meaning that what you were looking for was right in front of you all along. My late grandmother, who was my second parent, used to say it often. Four snakes represent each person who lived in the house: my mother, my brother, my grandmother, and me. Together, they trace the pathways we took through the home I grew up in.
The work is made from textiles recovered from that home, including faded, threadbare Western bedsheets from my grandmother’s bed, Soga batik, Indonesian ikat weaving, animal print, white lace, and pearl beads. The brown snake moves through these contrasting materials, bringing together fragments of my American childhood and my Indonesian heritage. I use the materials as both physical remnants of home and a way of mapping the cultural histories that shaped it. Through cutting, appliqué, stitching, and layering, memory becomes something I can reconstruct by hand.

Maneki Neko and Twin Fishheads

2023

69 cm x 48 cm each, triptych
artist’s blood, embroidery thread, found and second-hand fabrics, glass beads, lace, metal wire, packaging, porcelain beads, ribbonManeki Neko is a triptych of textile masks based on the Japanese lucky cat, a talisman associated with attracting customers, prosperity, and good fortune. I am interested in the tension between the promise of luck and the endless desire for more. The raised arm becomes a gesture of perpetual wanting, reflecting the relationship between fortune, consumption, and neoliberal desire. Found and second-hand textiles and objects are transformed into bodies associated with ritual, luck, and desire. At the opening of Adrift, A Shift at Willem Twee Kunstruimte, I anointed the masks with my blood, marking them with my physical presence. The gesture expressed my disillusionment with capitalist greed and the contradiction of using craft as a form of resistance while remaining embedded within the systems it critiques.Twin Fishheads is a diptych of embroidered textile masks that mirror one another while remaining distinctly different. Drawing from the Taoist concept of yin and yang, the works explore identity through the coexistence of apparent opposites. Each fish contains something of the other, suggesting that identity is continually shaped through difference and exchange. Found and second-hand materials are transformed from waste into objects that exist between body, costume, and sculpture. This transformation reflects my interest in mixedness and the experience of moving between identities, where different parts of the self can coexist without resolving into a single, stable whole.92 × 56 cm each, diptych
Embroidery thread, found and second-hand fabrics, glass beads, lace, metal wire, packaging, plastic beadsPoznań Textile Biennale, 2023
Photo: Mateusz Kowalczyk

Red Thread

2025

150 × 97 cm
bedsheets and batik napkins from my late grandmother’s house, other secondhand
textiles, red threadRed Thread brings together bedsheets from my late grandmother’s home with Indonesian batik napkins and other secondhand textiles. As a mixed Asian American, I am interested in how cultural identity is inherited through materials, even as traditions are fragmented, transformed, and carried across generations through migration. The red thread references the idea of an invisible thread connecting people across distance, time, and generations, which I use as a way of thinking about the connections between my own family and cultural histories.
I use quilting to physically bind these disparate materials together, creating a textile record of family, loss, and cultural inheritance. The worn fabrics carry traces of domestic labor, care, and everyday life, while the slow process of cutting, stitching, and quilting allows these histories to remain visible within the finished work. The quilt becomes a way of holding together materials and memories that might otherwise remain separate.

In the Grid

2026

112 × 68 cm & 177 × 73 cm, diptych
secondhand textiles, fabric dye, glass Mardi Gras beads, wool and cotton thread, cotton battingThis quilted diptych draws from landscapes and the practice of mapmaking, using fragmented forms to explore the space between what is known and what remains unknown. I am interested in maps as structures that promise orientation and understanding, while the landscape itself can resist being fully known. The quilted surface moves between recognizable landmarks and abstract shapes, creating a tension between fragments of knowledge and the uncertainty beyond them.The works are built through layers of secondhand textiles, dyed fabrics, wool and cotton thread, batting, and glass Mardi Gras beads. Gridded, woven, uneven, and fragmented forms create a shifting rhythm across the two panels, while quilting becomes a way of slowly navigating the surface. I allow the process of making to disrupt the logic of the map, letting patterns, textures, and color lead the work into abstraction. What begins as a landscape or map gradually becomes something less certain, where orientation gives way to wandering.

Ghidorah the Three-Faced Monster

2024

220 cm x 20 cm
chopsticks, elastic, embroidery thread, found and second-hand fabrics, glass beads, lace, packaging, porcelain beadsGhidorah the Three-Faced Monster draws from the iconic three-headed dragon from the Japanese Godzilla films, bringing together mythology, pop culture, and textile craft. I use Ghidorah as a figure for mixedness and the complexity of identity: a single body with multiple faces, personalities, and forces existing simultaneously. The dragon carries associations of power, luck, and destruction across different cultural traditions, allowing me to explore the tension between opposing aspects of the self.
Ghidorah exists between two states, the Ghidorah of the day and the Ghidorah of the night, reflecting the shifting relationship between action and emotion, light and darkness. I am interested in identity as something that can hold contradiction without needing to resolve it, and in the many faces we develop as we move between different cultural and social worlds.Limburg Biennale 2024
Curated by Jan Hoek

CURRENT

WORK CURRENT ABOUT CV CONTACT

Summer Canteen #3

2026

Communal Indonesian-American meal in collaboration with Shuang Xu & Seesaw Studio
textile installation, inherited batik tablecloths, storytelling performance
Seesaw Studio, Rotterdam, NL
Photo: Jennifer Carniel

VIEW PROJECT→
Summer Canteen #3

Fiber Art Studio: Zero Waste Appliqué & Intro to Hand-Quilting: Mini Intuitive QuiltsWorkshops

2025

Technical appliqué workshop exploring positive and negative shapes using zero-waste methods; hand-quilting workshop focused on intuitive and improvisational making and Gee’s Bend-inspired practice.Fiber Art Studio, Broedplaats VKG, Studio 2.59, Volkshotel, Amsterdam, NL
Photo: Raven Kiss

FIBER ART STUDIO →
Fiber Art Studio Instagram

Quilt in a Day

2025

Designed, facilitated, and participated in a communal quilting marathon with peers from the Narrative Quilt Making Spring Concentration taught by Zak Foster. The project developed from the collaborative learning and making of the concentration, emphasizing intuitive piecing, resourcefulness, problem-solving, and shared knowledge. Working with available materials and within a limited timeframe, participants used the structure of the challenge to move away from perfection and toward experimentation and collective making.Participants of Quilt in a Day with their works in front of the Northlight Building, Penland School of Craft, North Carolina, USA
Photo: Audrey Sun

Friendship Quilt Workshop Series & Community Artwork
2026 · De Voorkamer, Utrecht

VIEW PROJECT →
De Voorkamer Workshop Series

ABOUT

WORK CURRENT ABOUT CV CONTACT

Erin C. Doherty in Her Studio

2025

with works I Like Immigrant English Better and Bicephalous Face Mask
Photo: Iliana Michali

Erin C. Doherty (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily with fiber, textiles, and craft. Originally from New Orleans, she is based in Rotterdam with a studio in Amsterdam.

Her practice explores migration, cultural memory, inherited identity, labor, and material histories through quilting, hand embroidery, sewing, natural dyeing, and other handmade processes. Working with secondhand and inherited textiles, she considers materials as carriers of memory and traces of use, care, and cultural transmission.




Education
2016 — BFA, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
2023 — MFA Visual Arts & Post-Contemporary Practice, St. Joost School of Art and Design

CV

WORK CURRENT ABOUT CV CONTACT

CONTACT

WORK CURRENT ABOUT CV CONTACT