Opening Day Talk: Chris Friday

Free for Museum Members and only $20 for Not-Yet Members (includes Museum Admission) 

Join Sarasota Art Museum Saturday, May 3 for an engaging artist talk by award-winning multidisciplinary artist Chris Friday. Hear directly from the artist about her creative journey, the conceptual foundations of her work, and the insights shaping Where We Never Grow Old, her first museum solo exhibition, at Sarasota Art Museum.

Chris Friday is a multidisciplinary artist best known for her larger-than-life yet intimate figurative drawings, meticulously created in chalk on black paper. For her first solo museum exhibition, she explores the notion of “incorruptible environments.” These are the imagined sanctuaries we construct in our minds—our refuge from the harsh realities of the modern world—and the worlds we aspire to bring to life. Tradition, religion, and culture form the bedrock of these environments, while nostalgia and memory act as potent vessels, preserving ideas of self, community, and identity. Friday’s diverse works, ranging from large-scale drawings to textiles and sculptures, will serve as a contemplation of the “archive” and its potential role in (re)defining Blackness in media and popular culture. 

Friday’s work has been showcased in numerous group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including Rest is Power curated by the Center for Black Visual Culture at New York University (2023), and The Cartography Project at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, D.C. (2022). Based in Miami, Friday has received numerous awards, fellowships, and grants, and in 2023, she was named the South Arts Southern Prize State Fellow for the State of Florida.

This exhibition is organized by Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design, curated by Rangsook Yoon, Ph.D., senior curator, Sarasota Art Museum.

The full exhibition runs May 4 - August 10, 2025. Sarasota Art Museum is open Mon-Sat 10am-5pm and Sun 11am-5pm.