Dianna Frid: IT TAKES TIME, Selected Works from 2009 through 2017
October 21 through December 17, 2018
University Galleries of Illinois State University
University Galleries of Illinois State University
IT TAKES TIME: Selected Works from 2009 through 2017 presents 55 works by Mexican-born, Chicago-based artist Dianna Frid. The exhibition title refers to the process of creating work, to the recursive cycles of life and death, and to the vast scale of geological time. Frid cites the cadences of reading, writing, sewing, breathing, and thinking as integral to her process. Her sculptures, collages, textiles, artist’s books, and installations are inspired by a range of sources—including poems by Lucretius, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Dylan Thomas, texts and textile designs by Anni Albers, and carved hair and garments from classical Greek and Roman sculpture. Frid says she has “come to recognize how texts are sensuous experiences that embrace syntax but also exceed it through substance, color, and form.” Although her work “intersects with and borrows from written language,” she continues, “it also wrestles with language and its limits across the less verbal aspects of art and life.”
The exhibition centers around twenty-five graphite and embroidery works from Frid’s ongoing Words from Obituaries series, begun in 2010. The artist sorts through her archive of New York Times obituaries, finding moments of language that both resonate with the life of the deceased and operate outside of their source as evocative fragments of text. For example, “ONLY ONE FROM EARTH,” is a snippet taken from the obituary for Lucia Pamela, a musician who claimed she had recorded an album on the moon, while “TO FIND IT HAD BEEN WRITTEN BY A WOMAN” comes from the obituary of Iranian poet and activist Simin Behbahani. Frid classifies her selection into a color-coded system, removes spaces and punctuation, and stitches the words into graphite-covered paper that is mounted on canvas, encouraging a slow reading and an appreciation for the material inclinations of language. The artist will create a new iteration of Evidence of the Material World especially for this exhibition. Referring to a text about the nature of the universe by Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, the work is comprised of thin sheets of graphite-covered paper installed in response to University Galleries’ architectural space. Frid will also debut two new sculptures, including The light emitted now will reach the observer in the future / The light emitted in the past could have reached the observer at any given time. Featuring an expanse of draped reflective foil-covered canvas, the work is a meditation on the correlation between time, distance, and our perception of starlight. The second sculpture, From before you had a name, features peacock ore, aragonite, obsidian, sand selenite rose, and fluorite—stones and minerals from the geographical region now known as Mexico. More
The exhibition centers around twenty-five graphite and embroidery works from Frid’s ongoing Words from Obituaries series, begun in 2010. The artist sorts through her archive of New York Times obituaries, finding moments of language that both resonate with the life of the deceased and operate outside of their source as evocative fragments of text. For example, “ONLY ONE FROM EARTH,” is a snippet taken from the obituary for Lucia Pamela, a musician who claimed she had recorded an album on the moon, while “TO FIND IT HAD BEEN WRITTEN BY A WOMAN” comes from the obituary of Iranian poet and activist Simin Behbahani. Frid classifies her selection into a color-coded system, removes spaces and punctuation, and stitches the words into graphite-covered paper that is mounted on canvas, encouraging a slow reading and an appreciation for the material inclinations of language. The artist will create a new iteration of Evidence of the Material World especially for this exhibition. Referring to a text about the nature of the universe by Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius, the work is comprised of thin sheets of graphite-covered paper installed in response to University Galleries’ architectural space. Frid will also debut two new sculptures, including The light emitted now will reach the observer in the future / The light emitted in the past could have reached the observer at any given time. Featuring an expanse of draped reflective foil-covered canvas, the work is a meditation on the correlation between time, distance, and our perception of starlight. The second sculpture, From before you had a name, features peacock ore, aragonite, obsidian, sand selenite rose, and fluorite—stones and minerals from the geographical region now known as Mexico. More
Exhibition page
Exhibition images
Poster featuring conversation between Dianna Frid and Kendra Paitz
Satellite exhibition at Milner Library
Artist's website
Exhibition images
Poster featuring conversation between Dianna Frid and Kendra Paitz
Satellite exhibition at Milner Library
Artist's website
Photo credits: Jason Judd