On exhibit at the Sarasota Art Museum is a body of work that examines memory, childhood and the notion of archive through large-scale chalk drawings and handmade ceramic sculptures. Titled “Where We Never Grow Old,” it features work by Chris Friday. Executive Director Virginia Shearer says that Friday is an artist whose career is ascending.
“Chris is a Miami-based wonderful young artist who is now really starting to get recognition,” said Shearer. “This is her first solo museum exhibition. Chris has really had an incredible career so far.”
On either side of the gallery are depictions of Friday’s daughters. Images of the artist’s mother rising from a wood chair grace the back wall. At first glance, they appear to be photographs. But as Shearer points out, they’re actually drawings.
“The artist takes photographs to prepare to make these works of art,” Shearer explained. “She projects that photograph onto black paper, makes a cut-out, and then goes back in with the white chalk and fills in every meticulous detail. One might think that these are photographs that have been cut out and put on the wall, but they are fine, fine drawings made with a white chalk.”
On the near wall is another chalk drawing of Friday’s mother. Around this image, the artist has arranged dozens of comfort and soul food delicacies made of ceramics ranging from beans and rice to ribs, fried baloney and mac and cheese. Many have been gilded or layered in gold.
“Much like our tradition where we save, for example, a baby’s booties or baby’s first shoes, so in this case, she’s commemorating these foods from her childhood and essentially making them have an even greater value because gold has such a great value in our society,” Shearer observed.
Friday’s drawings and ceramics work symbiotically to create a sanctuary out of memory and imagination “where we never grow old.”
The exhibition is on display through August 10.
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Friday titled the drawings of her daughters “Future Venus 1” and “Future Venus 2.”
Noting chalk’s tendency to be dusty and messy, Shearer marvels at both Friday’s medium and technique.
“Dust and mess are not what you get here,” Shearer said. “You get a lot of detail.”
The drawings also possess a structural element as Friday layers and engrafts chalk on the black paper support.
Friday’s work draws on her upbringing. Through her drawings and ceramics, the artist reflects on the power of family and community bonds. “Her recollections of the music and warmth of kitchens and shared sould food resonate with a nostalgia rooted in Black cultural experience,” states the marquee at the entrance to the exhibition. “These experiences, along with comforting memories of sleeping beside cousins and feeling the embrace of her mother’s and grandmother’s homes, serve as emotional and narrative anchors throughout the exhibition.”
Shearer is equally enthralled by the installation of comfort and soul food surrounding the drawing of Friday’s mother sitting, contemplatively, in a kitchen chair.
“Her arm is resting on the back of the chair almost like ‘The Thinker,’ [Auguste] Rodin’s famous sculpture. And then all surrounding her mother are these beautiful detailed, and sometimes raw, depictions of food stuffs, soul food, made out of ceramics. All of these elements come out of family traditions, how to take care of one another, how to comfort one another.”
In that sense, Friday’s ceramic sculptures give tangible form to vivid memories and objects significant to her personal memories and Black Culture.
“Glazed in gold, familiar objects – bracelets, earrings, pendants, hairpins and soul food like baked beans, deviled eggs, sausages and macaroni and cheese – are transformed into sacred keepsakes,” states the marquee at the exhibition’s entry. “For Friday, gold is both personal and symbolic; it recalls the gold jewelry of her youth and maturity, the spiritual aura of traditional religious iconography, and the alchemical idea of transformation.”
Shearer also noted that Friday is concerned in the exhibition with the elevated morbidity experienced by African Americans.
“For many, many reasons, whether it’s diet or health or some of the aggressions or violence that Black are met with, people of color [have shorter life expectancies],” Shearer remarked.
According to a recent study published in The Harvard Gazette, the disparity in overall mortality rates between Black and white Americans has narrowed since the 1950s, though Black adults still have an 18 percent higher mortality rate. Among infants, however, the gap has widened, with Black infants dying at twice the rate of white infants. The mortality rate for Black infants was 92 percent higher than for white infants in the 1950s. Today the difference is 115 percent. Medical conditions during pregnancy were the leading cause of excess death in the 2010s.
This study analyzed data collected over seven decades – in essence, since the end of World War II. The study concluded that over that span, the death of more than 5 million Black Americans could have been avoided had they enjoyed equal access to health care, nutrition and safe neighborhoods.
Chris Friday is a multidisciplinary artist and independent curator, based in Miami.
Friday’s work explores themes of rest, privacy, and supplementing the archive as a way of advocating and claiming space for Black bodies that are historically excluded from it.
Utilizing the internet as an infinite source of archival samples, she collects iconography from the shared experiences of people of color to construct and preserve alternative historical and personal narratives.
Often incorporating a black-and-white Chalkboard aesthetic, which plays on concepts of learning and teaching, Friday analyzes mainstream media to identify problematic representations and their origins, questions the legitimacy of such perspectives, and imagines possible solutions with her work. Her portfolio features large-scale works on paper, murals, video, ceramics, projections, photography, comic illustrations, and social practice/activism through curating.
Friday’s work has been included in exhibitions locally, nationally and internationally. Notable group exhibitions include “Narcissist”, presented by the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami (2023) as a part of the Art on the Plaza Residency, “Rest is Power”curated by Deborah Willis and Kira Joy Williams and presented at New York University (2023), and The Cartography Project” presented by the Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C. (2022). Solo exhibitions include the forthcoming “Where We Never Grow Old”, curated by Rangsook Yoon and presented at Sarasota Art Museum, (2025) “Good Times” curated by Laura Novoa and presented at Oolite Arts, (2023) and One More River, curated by Michael Dickins and presented at Austin Peau State University (2022)
Friday has received numerous awards, fellowships and grants, including being named the South Arts Southern Prize State Fellow for the State of Florida (2023), a Knight Foundation “Knights Champion” grant recipient (2022) , a “The Ellies” Creator award from Oolite Arts (2023 &2021), The GMBCV People's Choice award in Miami Beach's No Vacancy juried art show (2021), and residencies with AIRIE Everglades National Park (2024), Diaspora Vibes Culture Arts Incubator (2024), Oolite Arts, (2023/22), MassMoCA (2023), Anderson Ranch Arts Center (2022), and the Visual Arts Residency at Chautauqua Institute (2019).
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To read more stories about the arts in Southwest Florida visit Tom Hall's website: SWFL Art in the News.