Bust 5, from the series Mummy Wheat,

2021

Martha Friedman is a sculptor whose multimedia practice incorporates choreography, printmaking, drawing, cast and poured rubber, mold-blown glass, plaster, wax, and concrete into works that encompass her interdisciplinary interests. Body Matters presents two new series of sculptures by the artist, a Princeton University faculty member. Friedman draws inspiration from the sculptural traditions of ancient Egyptian mummification, Greco-Roman portrait busts, nineteenth-century public monuments, and drawings of the brain structure and nerves by the early-twentieth-century neuroscientist Santiago Ramón y Cajal. In bringing together these influences, Friedman mines the space between visceral and intellectual experiences of the body to consider the ways in which our physical forms shape our understanding of being human and our desire to transcend those limits. Body Matters is curated by Mitra M. Abbaspour, Haskell Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.