Ada Friedman

please read the full interview I did on my work with dearest @alina_tenser @bombmag - link in bio 🔮

“Performance Proposals, Everydays” install images, Ana Mendieta Gallery and Atrium, May 2026 @uiowaart - thank you to @grantwood.artcolony @uiowapaintingdrawing / photos: @brendanppaul — words below begin the catalogue essay by @ashton__cooper To understand Ada Friedman’s work is to disregard one’s tacit understanding of a painting’s form, to let the artist take you into her own highly particular system for generating painting, drawing, and performance—or, more to the point, artworks that are emphatically all of the above. Friedman’s unique system of categorization is as constitutive of her pieces as paper, acrylic, or charcoal. She conceptualizes the work in two types: First, “Everyday Drawings,” which, true to their name, are works on paper, and, second, “Performance Proposals,” which are loosely tied to painting, though they rarely sit comfortably within the standard confines of that category. The “Performance Proposals” are further divided into distinct bodies of work that Friedman refers to as “plays.” This classification system lives in the works’ titles. For example, in the ongoing work Performance Proposal, Pathwork: Floor 4, Friedman first names the work as a “Performance Proposal,” then indicates its “play” or series title as “Pathwork,” and finally its individual title as “Floor 4.” In supplanting the typical art parlance of “series” with the word “play,” Friedman purposefully invokes the body in time and space. She insists on the acts of painting and drawing as performative processes that unfold over time and on artworks as receptacles and records of movement and action. Play also calls to mind an ethos of lightness, fun. For Friedman, the complex scaffolding of the work’s making is not restrictive, but a structure in which to mess around, improvise, and tinker.

“Performance Proposals, Everydays” Ana Mendieta Gallery & Upper Atrium Areas May 5-16, 2026/// Visual Art Building, University of Iowa, Iowa City IA Performance in Ana Mendieta Gallery: @ 5PM-ish Daily, May 5-16 (approx. 10 min.) “Performance Proposal, Pathwork: 18 counts in Ana Mendieta Gallery,” performer: ABF ///Exhibition Open: @ 8AM Tuesday, May 5 ///Artist Talk in Room 116 ABW: @ 6-7PM Wednesday, May 6 /// Exhibition Opening Reception: @ 6-8PM Thursday, May 7 I rarely get a chance to present different parts of my studio world together. By showing distinct work zones, the logic of my studio practice is on display. Fore fronting select conceptual structures in place in my studio is the framework for this show. Installed are works from three different plays or bodies of work: “Performance Proposal, Helen Rides” (2018-ongoing); “Performance Proposal, Pathwork” (2021-ongoing); “Performance Proposal, New Play Device” (2026-ongoing). These are installed alongside two umbrella drawing categories: Performance Proposal Drawings (2018-ongoing) and Everyday Drawings (2017-ongoing) I am making one drawing handout that maps & identifies the works. And another drawing, that is also the notes for my Artist Talk later this week. Feel welcome to pick up this paper at the gallery. To view “Performance Proposals, Everydays,” start at Ana Mendieta Gallery and wind upward.

42 today! sky flat gray, snowing like in 1984 but that was dc - searching skin bag Everyday Drawing, Calendar 12/21-5/22 2021 - 2026 India ink, acrylic, watercolor, graphite, pastel, marker, colored pencil, charcoal, foil, candy wrappers, and origami paper on paper 24 x 18 in.

final week of “star” show @gallerykendrajaynepatrick - abf website updates;) + more in motion;) always, if a bit slow, but steady& full of love:)x “Performance Proposal, Pathwork: Threshold 4, Side B, Drawing” 2025 acrylic, oil, watercolor, pastel, graphite, charcoal, Pantone swatches, staples, pen on paper 18 1/2 x 11in / 28 x 47cm

listening to #deathandlifeofgreatamericancities while driving across the pretty prairie, irony not lost, found going through drawings on the road

#AnaMendieta grave visit yesterday , cedar rapids IA - happy birthday today AM - she is buried with her parents - it’s rainy working sliding finding crying dude idk about today

@aabbff ‘Star’ ⭐️Fridays & Saturdays 12-18h Tuesdays - Thursdays by appointment Ada Friedman ‘Performance Proposal, Pathwork: Ceiling 1, Floor 2’ 2021-2025 (sides A & B) oil, acrylic, watercolor, India ink, graphite, water soluble pastel, colored pencil, graphite, glassine, canvas, linen, archival tissue paper, tin foil, cinefoil, Mylar, acrylic mediums, PVA size, mod podge matte, collected fabrics, favorite old jeans, Roz’s work dress and practice embroidery, tin can lids 53½ x 97 in. 135 x 246 cm ✨✨✨✨ ✨1-6 - Side A ✨7- sketch/drawing ✨8-13 - Side B

some views of “Star”, a show of recent paintings & drawings from my “Performance Proposal: Pathwork” body of work - on view in Bern @gallerykendrajaynepatrick through Dec. 13, 2025

A cat, an artist, a painting, a calendar, a map and a journal walk into an art gallery. ... ⭕ ⁉️ My take on @aabbff 's second solo at @gallerykendrajaynepatrick - up now in #Bern 🐈

“Star” 2nd show @gallerykendrajaynepatrick opens tonight in bern 10.10.25 — this is a solo install of paintings&drawings from my current body of work, “Pathwork” - i’m excited we have on the walls smaller-scale drawings &(my-)body-sized paintings Performance Proposal, Pathwork: Ceiling 1/ Floor 2 (side b, drawing 1), 2025 Acrylic, watercolor, colored pencil, graphite, marker, and pen on paper 18 x 22 in.

“Star” opens 10-10-2025 in bern @gallerykendrajaynepatrick press release text: Star is the name of the artist’s cat. Cats are no joke. They are theatrical. They take us out of ourselves, and put us back in our place. They have nine lives, a keen sense of infinity, and move at seven times our speed, from where we are sitting. Their self-care rituals are a thing to behold. Ada Friedman’s paintings thrill us. Confronted with their plain unqualified existence, we are faced with an artist’s heroic yet humble project: Let Abstraction face Nature. Home in on the “zero” of painting, knowing it will remain undiscovered, a Grenzbegriff. Ada Friedman’s paintings are calendars from out of time. Meticulous records of the freedom to create, move and be still. They often take years to complete (in this show, the three principal works are each 3-4 years in the making). No process is central, but Ostranenje and defamilarisation function as a means of connection, of renewing perception. Making things strange, but substantial. This takes time. There is much tenderness here, about what will forever stay hidden and yet remains in play. One side of the painting is hidden from the other. Layers of subtle hues, covering notes to self and other details. A chronicle of meticulous plans, their abandonment or fulfillment; many stories told. Geometric rules subverted with a light touch. An exacting shade of brown, across a can lid and the underlying scrap of jean fabric, itself bonded to silken paper and this in turn to sheets of polymers, mirrored or transparent. “Painting is loss,” Ada will say. What is painting as such? Pure colour radiates in contradiction to the sediments of history. Referent hangs with referent, signs exchange signals. Malevich, minus the irony, but funny. The cat looks back at you across the unspeakable void, ready to cuddle. full artwork info in comments: “Performance Proposal, Pathwork: Threshold 4, side B” 2023-2025…