Bio

Martha Friedman makes sculptures that blend references to the body, industry, and abstraction. Working with rubber, silicone, glass, and other materials, she builds forms that suggest organs, tools, joints, or fragments without fully becoming any one thing. Some pieces sag or bulge; others are skewered, stacked, or held in suspension in ways that create tension and instability. Her sculptures often feel elastic, strained, or slightly off balance, as though they are holding themselves together in real time. Her sculptures avoid stable representation, instead remaining open-ended objects shaped by processes of casting, repetition, and recombination.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Friedman received her MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2003 and her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998.

Her work has been exhibited widely, including solo exhibitions at The Kitchen, New York; Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco; Princeton University Art Museum; The Henry Museum, Seattle; Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit; DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park; and Locust Projects, Miami, among others.

Friedman has participated in numerous group exhibitions at institutions including the Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs; Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History; Frieze New York Sculpture Park; The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, Moscow; and the Public Art Fund, New York.

Friedman's collaborations with choreographers extend her sculptural practice into movement, where bodies, materials, and systems intersect. With Susan Marshall Dance Company, she created Two Person Operating System, presented at The Kitchen with support from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her ongoing collaboration with Silas Riener includes Pore (Locust Projects) and Tenterhooks (Jessica Silverman Gallery), where elastic sculptural systems are activated through the performer's body.

Friedman is a Professor of the Practice in Visual Arts at Princeton University, where she served as Director from 2017 to 2021. She has also taught at Yale University, Cooper Union, and Rutgers University.