Chris Friday is a Miami-based, African American artist. “Where We Never Grow Old” at Sarasota Art Museum is her first solo museum exhibition. Her ageless realm exists on many levels in her site-specific installation, which is a loving celebration of the artist’s family. It’s also a memory palace of Friday’s cultural history. And a defiant refusal to see that history erased.
The Big Picture
Five photorealistic drawings of Friday’s mother and daughter are the heart of this show. They’re lifelike and larger-than-life. It looks like she’s drawn them directly on the walls. In fact, they’re chalk drawings on black paper attached to the walls. While the gallery’s small, Friday’s oversized relatives have room to breathe. The ceilings are tall, with plenty of white space. Friday punctuates her family portraits with snippets from the gospel hymn “I’ll Fly Away.” Miniature ceramics also orbit the figures like tiny satellites. The meaning of these pieces is deeply personal. Friday’s figure drawings are easier to read. Their body language speaks volumes.
Days of Future Past
“Future Venus I” shows one of Friday’s daughters lounging horizontally on the picture plain. This African American teenager looks totally relaxed. Eyes closed, her textured hair radiates upward in coils as her sweatshirt proclaims “COLLEGE.” A chain of gold charm bracelets arcs behind her face like a halo. Its miniature symbols – cross, heart, lock, hand – suggest protection, faith, and vulnerability. She’s framed by the words “…a few more weary days,” followed by “& then…” A hopeful hint of a better future in days to come.
Chris Friday’s “Future Venus in Two Parts (Part 1)” from 2025 is on display in the exhibition “Chris Friday: Where We Never Grow Old” at Sarasota Art Museum.
Friday’s other daughter is the subject of “Future Venus II.” She’s lying on her side, curled on the implied floor. Or hovering right above it. Her face is wrapped in circles of braided hair. You’re looking at her, but she’s looking down and doesn’t see you. She’s relaxed, unguarded, un-self-conscious. This Venus of Tomorrow feels safe in this space. “Some Glad Morning” are the words curled beneath her. In the song, they announce a flight to a better world. The girl in this drawing has reached a glad destination in this one.
“Mother/Midas as Liminal Space” freeze-frames her mother’s lifetime in two images. In one, she stands, mid-stride. In the other, she’s easing herself into a chair. Her caftan’s bold geometry vibrates against the stark, white background. Standing or sitting, she’s a powerful figure, but weary. “When the shadows of this life have gone” are the promising words below her.
Mother and daughters. Friday hyper-realistic style clearly shows you who they are. But where are they?
Miami-based artist Chris Friday, who has her first solo exhibition at Sarasota Art Museum, is shown working on one of her pieces.
The artist describes this space as an “incorruptible environment.” Strictly speaking, this installation has no environment – just figures suspended in a void. There’s no background behind them. No room, no field, no meadow. Just plenty of white space.
What is this place?
The exhibition title is a clue…
In the hymn, “The Place Where We Never Grow Old” is the next world – namely heaven. Here, it’s a place on earth and a peaceable kingdom of the mind. On earth, African Americans often die young. In Friday’s imaginary sanctuary, they’re safe, alive and well in this world.
But there’s more to them than meets the eye.
Chris Friday’s “Mother-Midas as liminal Space,” one of the images in her first solo exhibition at Sarasota Art Museum.
Forever Young
Friday’s figures are loving family portraits. But highly unconventional. If Norman Rockwell painted her mother and daughters, they’d probably be smiling back at you with looks of recognition in their eyes.
But Friday’s family doesn’t. The mother looks away. The daughters look down. They’re not posing or performing for you. Their thoughts have turned inward. Their expressions are serene. They’re unafraid but not on display.
They’ve gone to a place where they never grow old. A safe place, to use that overused term. They’re free to relax, to drop their guard. It’s an incorruptible environment but it’s not a goldfish bowl. It is also a private space.
Friday’s mother and daughters are at peace. Why? You can’t read the answer on their faces. They keep their thoughts to themselves. But their inner peace isn’t a total mystery. Iconic objects put their calm abiding in context.
This imaginary realm isn’t just fantasy.
It’s also a palace of memory.
“The only thing deviled roound here is eggs,” hand-built, kiln-fired ceramic with solid gold luster, is on display in the Sarasota Art Museum exhibition “Chris Friday: Where We Never Grow Old.”
Remembrances of things past
The artist loves and values her family. She treasures their ambitions, their hard work, their dreams and the quotidian ephemera of their lives. That’s the significance of her ceramic pieces – charm bracelets, baking pans, deviled-egg cups and the like. They’re clay-fired recreations of ordinary objects. But Friday has gilded them, and that makes them precious. Her way of saying: “You matter. Your days matter. Your experience matters.”
These artifacts are also links to cultural memory. Not just daily life in the present. But Black history stretching back for decades.
According to Friday, “Black culture often functions as both heaven and a haven. We turn to these things and each other to sustain ourselves as we endeavor to survive, sustain and to memorialize the things we are constantly losing.”
Many of the Miami neighborhoods of the artist’s childhood have been bulldozed and gentrified out of existence. Friday notes that “Black American traditions, culture and history seem as though it is not being allowed to grow old, as if it is unworthy of protection and preservation.”
The artist disagrees.
This heavenly haven shows you why.
‘Chris Friday: Where We Never Grow Old’
Runs through Aug. 10 at Sarasota Art Museum, 1001 South Tamiami Trail, Sarasota; 941-309-4300; sarasotaartmuseum.org
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Sarasota Art Museum hosts site-specific exhibit by Miami artist
