Elisa D'Arrigo

Elisa D’Arrigo currently works in ceramics, after a 30 year hiatus from clay in which she worked with a range of materials including handstitched and laminated cloth. Her intimately scaled ceramic works allude to the body, conflating color, surface and animated sculptural form within the context of the glazed ceramic vessel. 

In a review that appeared in Hyperallergic (April 21, 2019), when discussing D’Arrigo’s works, John Yau notes: “...these works can be swollen or scrunched, ultimately becoming personifications of vulnerability, clumsiness, and inelegance – all the aspects of our body and behavior that call attention to our fallibilities. I think D’Arrigo’s preternatural ability to invade that side of our consciousness – the one that is fearful of the gaze of others – imbues her pieces with their unaccountable presence.” 

D’Arrigo has had 22 solo exhibitions and “Taking Shapes”, her 12th solo exhibition at the Elizabeth Harris Gallery in New York, NY is currently on view (Sept 9-Oct 21, 2023). Her work has been in numerous two-person and group exhibitions including most recently at the Pamela Salisbury Gallery (Hudson, NY), FiveMyles (Brooklyn, NY), Patricia Sweetow Gallery (Los Angeles, CA), Michael David Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), and The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY). 

Her work is held in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY), The Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), The Mead Art Museum (Amherst, NY), The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (New Paltz, NY), The Weatherspoon Art Museum (Greensboro, NC), The Mint Museum (Charlotte, NC) and The High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), where she had a solo exhibition in 1990 (“Art at the Edge”) curated by Carrie Przybilla. One of her ceramic sculptures is currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Reviews, interviews and articles have appeared in The New York Times, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Two Coats of Paint, ArtNews, Sculpture, Ceramics: Art + Perception, Partisan Review, ArtPapers, ArtSpiel, Too Much Art, Romanov Grave and The New York Observer, among others. 

Residencies include the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, (Umbertide, Italy), Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, NY), The MacDowell Colony (Peterborough, NH) , and Dieu Donne Papermill (NYC). 

She has received grants from NYFA and the Ariana Foundation for the Arts. D’Arrigo was born and raised in the Bronx, NY. In 1971 she attended CIDOC in Cuernavaca, Mexico; she received a BFA in Ceramics from SUNY New Paltz in 1975. She lives and works in New York City.