Words

About

Dara Friedman is a German born artist and filmmaker working in Miami. She uses everyday sights and sounds as the raw material for film and video artworks that reverberate with emotional energy. With a background in structural film and dance, Friedman’s cinema calls for a radical reduction of the medium to its most essential material properties. In place of linear storylines, her films typically portray straightforward actions and situations that unfold according to predetermined rules and guidelines.

Yet for all of Friedman’s strenuous logic and discipline, her approach remains unabashedly sensual and emotive. Bearing rich imagery and a strong emphasis on bodily experience, her films generate moments of high-pitched, cathartic intensity as well as serene, even euphoric interludes.

Friedman’s solo exhibitions include: The Tiger’s Tail, San Carlo Cremona, Italy (2022), Harburger Kunstverein (2019), a mid-career survey Dara Friedman: Perfect Stranger, Pérez Art Museum Miami (2017-2018), accompanied by a catalog raisonée published by Prestel, Aspen Art Museum (2017), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014), Museum of Contemporary Art of Detroit (2014), Contemporary Art Museum of Raleigh, North California (2012), Public Art Fund New York (2007), and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York (1998, 2000, 2002, 2007, 2011, 2014 and 2017), Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia, Italy (2002), Supportico Lopez, Berlin (2017), Galleria Franco Noero, Turin, Italy (2018), Kayne Griffin Corcoran (2014, 2017). Major public collections include The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; French National Collection, and Julia Stoschek Collection, Düsseldorf. Friedman is a recipient of the Rome Prize (1999) and a Guggenheim Fellow (2019). Recently she completed "The Empress", a large scale labyrinth commission designed with her mother Gundula Thormaehlen Friedman. She is currently in production with Ecologist Josh Smith on: River Hill, Silo City, Buffalo, University at Buffalo Arts Collaboratory, an active monumental garden and labyrinth transforming a quarter acre of post-industrial with hardy pollinators and speaking to the meander of the Buffalo River .

Publications

“Dara Friedman, Perfect Stranger,” catalogue raisonné, published by Prestel, New York
“Dara Friedman,” published by SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico
“Celluloid Cave,” published by Thread Waxing Space, New York