Dara Friedman

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.

A mid-career survey exhibition Dara Friedman: Perfect Stranger was on view from 2017-18 at the Perez Art Museum Miami with a catalog raisonné distributed by Prestel. Aspen Art Museum, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; Public Art Fund; The Kitchen; Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland ; and SITE Santa Fe have hosted solo exhibitions of her work. The works are housed in such public collections as the Museum Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; Pérez Art Museum Miami; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; and Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Her institutional education included the Städelschule in Frankfurt with Peter Kubelka, as well as at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, in London; University of Miami, School of Motion Pictures; and Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Friedman is the recipient of the Rome Prize (2000) and is represented by Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York and Rome.

Friedman is currently in pre-production on a new project called FIGHT (Temple Door) dealing with conflict resolution.

Selected Filmography

Revolution, 1993-2003
Digital color video, transferred from 16mm film, silent, 9 min., 20 sec.

Total, 1997
Super 8mm color film optically reprinted to 16mm film, with optical sound, 12 min.

Government Cut Freestyle, 1998
Digital color video, transferred from 16mm film, silent, 9 min., 20 sec.

Whip Whipping the Wall, 1998-2002
Digital color video, transferred from Super 8mm film, with sound, 15 min.

Bim Bam, 1999
16mm color film installation with two slot-loading projectors, metal armature, CD player, and speakers, 1 min., 1 sec.; 1 min., 12 sec.

Musical, 2007-2008
HD color video, with sound, 48 min.

Dancer, 2001
HD black-and-white video transferred from Super 16mm film, with sound, 25 min.

PLAY, (Parts 1 & 2), 2013
HD color video and black-and-white and color widescreen Super 8mm film transferred to HD video, with sound, 45min.

Ishmael and the Well of Ancient Mysteries, 2014
HD color video, with sound, 12 min., 17 sec.

RITE, 2014
HD color video, with sound, 4 min., 10 sec.

Mother Drum, 2015-2016
Three-channel synchronized HD color video (HD color video and Super 16mm film transferred to HD color video), with sound, 14 min., 31 sec.

Dichter, 2017
Four-channel HD color video transferred from 16 mm film, with sound, 32 min.

L☿ver, 2018
35mm film, 16mm film and HD video, black & white and color, with sound, 6 min.