Good Times: Chris Friday

In Good Times, multi-disciplinary artist Chris Friday continues her exploration of the depiction of Black bodies and their presence/absence in contemporary space. Sourcing personal narratives, expressions of popular culture, and communal ritual, Friday utilizes drawing, video, illustration, sound, and ceramic sculpture to create installations that prompt the viewer to consider more expansive notions of blackness and where communities – known and unknown – are given a space to dialogue, reflect, and celebrate.

Friday’s subjects – family, friends, colleagues – and the settings in which they exist, become mechanisms to unsettle traditional hierarchies and arrangements of power. In particular, she presents large-scale drawings of figures in acts of leisure – playing, dancing, resting – that refuse full exposure in a slight but noticeable turning away from the viewer. By placing them in the public realm (i.e. the gallery space), but limiting access to their interiority, Friday’s works inhabit a liminal space that is at once visible and hidden, silent and defiant.

About the artist
Chris Friday is a multidisciplinary artist based in Miami, Florida. Her portfolio features large-scale mixed-media works on paper, murals, video, ceramics, projections, photography, illustration, and social practice/activism through curating.

Friday has exhibited and curated extensively in her hometown of Miami, FL, as well as nationally and internationally. Most notably, her work was a part of The Cartography Project presented by the Kennedy Center (Washington, DC, 2022), Yard Sale x Lucy St., an exhibition and interactive shop presented by The Wolfsonian as a part of the Open House program (Miami Beach, FL, 2021), and “#WhoOwnsBlackArt?” presented by Zeal Press at Muce 305 (Miami, FL, 2019).

Friday received “The Ellies” Creator award from Oolite Arts (2021) and The GMBCV People’s Choice award for her work in Miami Beach’s No Vacancy juried art show (2021), and has participated in residencies at Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass, CO, 2022), Bakehouse Art Complex (Miami, FL, 2021), and the Visual Arts Residency at Chautauqua Institute (Chautauqua, NY, 2019). She is currently a resident artist at Oolite Arts in Miami, Florida.

Friday received an MFA from Florida International University (2020) and a BFA from New World School of the Arts (2015), where she is an adjunct professor.

About the curator
Laura Novoa is a curator and arts administrator based in Miami, FL. She works as Assistant Director of Programs + Community Engagement at the Bakehouse Art Complex, where she is responsible for managing the studio residency, organizing and implementing public and exhibition-related programming, and facilitating educational initiatives and community partnerships. Recently, she curated New Topographies: 25.7617° N, 80.1918 W°, a multi-site installation by Gabriela Gamboa (2022), and co-curated A landscape longed for: The garden as disturbance with Adler Guerrier (2021) and Viewpoints: Expressions of an artist community with Edouard Duval-Carrie (2021), among other exhibitions.