Curatorial
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Friday: One More River
The New Gallery, Sept. 26 - Oct. 28, 2022 |
Exhibition Catalogue
exhibition essay by: Joe Tolbert, Jr |
“Friday creates drawings of figures at rest or doing mundane leisure activities, but in a larger-than-life scale. It’s the scale of the drawings, one close to twenty feet long, that really draws in the viewer and enhances the importance, and desire, of leisure and rest – but with their backs turned toward the viewers – forcing the viewer to become a bystander and witness to this leisure – not a participant. The exhibition title, One More River, refers to the song One More River to Cross, by Sam Cooke. With this exhibition, Friday, as a Black woman, asks the question, ‘When is that last river coming, because I’m tired.”
In the exhibition essay, written specifically for this exhibition by Joe Tolbert, Jr., the writer states, “Set against the backdrop of the artist’s experience of 2020, family archives and history collide in Chris Friday’s new exhibition, One More River. With this exhibition, Friday invites us into her freedom dream of rest for Black people in the United States. “One more river to cross. One more mountain to climb. One more valley I gotta go through then I’m leaving my troubles behind.” The chorus of the song from which this exhibition gets its title sets up a problem for Black people. Friday shared, “It’s this idea, especially in the Black community that, ‘Oh, don’t worry about the here and now, cause when we die, we will get this eternal rest.’ I’m fundamentally disagreeing with the idea that we’re not allowed to have that right now.” Gallery Guide
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