DUKE RILEY

Duke Riley, the Boston-born artist based in Brooklyn, NY. A former tattoo artist, he lived in apigeon coop while attending RISD in the early 90s before earning his MFA from Pratt Institute.He taught art in underserved communities and domestic violence shelters in Boston and NewYork City in the late 90s and early 2000s while continuing to pursue his art practice.Over the past two decades, he has produced critically acclaimed works that explore theinterface of institutional power and the natural world. Along with his highly intricate drawings,mosaics, and scrimshaw on maritime debris, he has carried out a litany of complex extralegalprojects including being arrested for piloting a homemade submarine into the security zone ofthe Queen Mary 2 in New York Harbor, trained pigeons smuggling cigars from Cuba to KeyWest, a suitcase of bed bugs that appeared in a Trump hotel, flying 2000 pigeons wearing LEDlights over the East River from an aircraft carrier, and an action movie written and filmed byinmates in a Somali pirate detention center.Duke Riley has had solo exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum of Art, MOCACleveland, Havana Biennale, the Sydney Biennale, Mercosul Biennial, and Philigraphica. Hiswork is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art, The Whitney Museum, theBrooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

@dukerileystudio