Drawing on her recent experience of becoming a mother, artist Zoe Friedman has created an immersive and layered universe of flora and fauna that explores the exuberant yet mysterious forces of life. Combining drawing, illustration, hand-cut paper, digital illustration and bespoke lighting elements, Friedman’s process mirrors the simultaneous joy and complexity of existence and invites the viewer to reflect on birth and growth.

In Friedman’s work, the playful, large-scale animal forms and the overlapping bold colors and patterns framing them beckon a heightened form of sentience. Illuminated by lighting elements of the artist’s own design, the installation is a portal into Friedman’s mythology of motherhood, in which she explores the instinct and power to care, nourish and grow. The large scale of each mural within the installation conveys the artist’s understanding of love as an expansive, forceful and overwhelming emotion. Much like a forest, the individual characters and forms in Friedman’s cast are connected and form a wondrous narrative.

Sentient Forest was on view from November 2021 to August 2022 at the Academy Art Museum in Easton, MD.

This permanent site-specific installation was made for the newly renovated Enoch Pratt Free Library in Hampden, Baltimore. Made with hundreds of hand cut paper plants and animals native to the environment of  Maryland, then printed large format to cover the arc of the main space in the library. Exisiting outside a typical gallery or museum space, Song of Summer is meant to be a place of refuge for all citizens of Baltimore to come and enjoy. By focusing on the native plants and animals, the piece also draws awareness to the importance of caring for our local environment. I partnered with the Patterson Park Audubon Center and the Carrie Murray Nature Center to create fun, informative hand outs to go along with the mural piece. The site will also host workshops on how to cultivate native plants in your own yard.

This project is extremely important to me because it lives in the library in my home town and is open for everyone to come and enjoy. It bridges my passion for art and education and is accessible to all.

Completed in December of 2020. Purchased with funds from the Baltimore Percent for Art Program.

This site specific installation plays with the boundaries of our interpretation of the domestic and the wild, interior and exterior space, and our digital and analogue reality. Covering 1000 square feet of space that runs through a main hallway and elevator lobby at Terrell Place in Washington DC, printed imagery pops off the wall with strategically placed light fixtures which illuminate patterns and cast shadows. Made for the FaceBook Open Arts Program in December of 2019.

I start by building a visual archive of photos I have taken of my travels, of my pets and of plants from botanical gardens and my house. I print them, cut them out by hand and then arrange them into new landscapes.  I thoroughly enjoy the process of collaging images together. It generates connections and meaning between different elements in my life, revealing what feels like memory.  ​

These two examples were made in 2015 and 2017. They are built in custom frames that press the collage between two pieces of glass and hang two inches off the wall to cast shadows behind them.

Drawing inspiration from traditional shadow puppets and sculptural mobiles, “By Land or By Sea” is an installation comprised of hand cut paper shapes activated by light, shadow, and motion. Friedman's use of colorful mobiles and playful figures takes on a new dimension in shadow form, illustrating an evolving story across the walls and ceilings of the gallery.  Tigers and birds meander through forests, whales and fish float though the sea, and boats carrying cargo navigate the room, revealing a greater journey and pattern of migration. “By Land or By Sea” explores the connections that humans have to the natural flow of migration, instinctual survival, and the increasing need to adapt to a constantly changing environment.
18 hanging mobiles made of hand cut paper, shadows

2016

Isolated images of nature are printed on paper and assembled to form large geometric landscapes. By photocopying found images, I reference the “infinite archive” that modern technology makes accessible at all times. Through repetition and inversion, extensive patterning reveals the hidden geometry present within organic forms.
A stopmotion animation accompanies the installation.
Each panel is 8 feet tall by 7.5 feet wide. I print each image on regular A4 paper, then cut and assemble by hand. The paper is held in place and attached to wooden panels with nails.

May 2012

Bringing awareness to our relationship with time, and the ultimate ephemeral nature of all things, Time is a Milk Bowl is an all-immersive art and sound installation that interacts with the industrial mechanics of the building. This documentation tries to capture the event in the Clock Room in the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower in 2013. The band, Peals, performs a set that corresponds to the images in the middle of the room. The four separate 30 minute videos, all stop motion animation, are projected on all four walls and play simultaneously. The music and the videos were specifically designed for the space.

Time is a Milk Bowl was re-created for Pioneer Works in New York City and at Studio 1469 in Washington, DC in 2015.

I love art that can change every time you look at it. I often use light as a medium to interact with. The light may come from a window and change the work of art depending on what time of day it is, or it may come from a strategically placed source meant to illuminate the work from the back. These hanging tapestries showcase both uses of light.

I have always loved the paintings of Sandro Boticelli. I wanted to re-create a version of Primavera, or the Allegory of Spring. I divided the painting into five sections and adapted each into patterns. I then hand cut these patterns into large sheets of Tyvek. The piece is meant to hang in windows so that it can play with the light. As the day progresses, the light filters through and casts shadows across the walls and floors of the room.
Made in 2013, this piece has been exhibited  at the Bromo Seltzer Arts Tower and Area 405 in Batimore, the Angel Orensanz Foundation in New York City, the WTMD radio station in Towson as part of the show Everything On It with Andrew Liang, the Modella Gallery in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and the Cade Gallery in Arnold, MD.

Pointing at the Moon is a collaged diptech that is printed and then hand cut with intricate patterns and illuminated from the back.
In 2019 both peices were exhibited in a solo exhibition at Format Art Space in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Hand-cut paper window hanging, shaved pine cones, pine needles, stones, duck feathers, berries, glass bowl, dead bee, birch bark, lace.
This body of work was created while in residence at the Vermont Studio Center. Besides the hand-cut paper window hanging, all materials were found and collected during my month long stay, then organized into mandala-like arrangements. The patterns changed daily as I moved elements around, finding balance in opposing and fluid forms. At the end, I swept everything up and left it in piles outside.

This piece became a kind of living performance and ephemeral installation.

2012