1-54 New York
Booth 26
May 08 – 11, 2025
Fridman Gallery is honored to present a survey of 12 exceptional artists combining representation and abstraction.
Featured Artists:
Debra Cartwright
Hana Yilma Godine
Humbert Howard
Madjeen Isaac
Fidelis Joseph
Jerome Lagarrigue
Naomi Lisiki
Kerry James Marshall
Dindga McCannon
Wura-Natasha Ogunji
Tigist Yoseph Ron
Carrie Mae Weems
Debra Cartwright depicts the relationship between the Black female body and American medical history, including the controversial practices of J. Marion Sims. Transcending the legacy of violence and stolen selfhood, Cartwright’s artworks make space for re-embodiment, myth, and intimacy.
Cartwright received an MFA from Rutgers University. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art at Notre Dame University.
Debra Cartwright, Uncharted Waters, 2023, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in.
Hana Yilma Godine‘s work seamlessly blends effortless brushstrokes with the floral patterns of chiffon fabrics which Ethiopian women use to make dresses.
Godine received an MFA from Boston University in 2020, having previously studied at the Abyssinia School of Fine Art and Design, and the Ale School of Fine Art and Design, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where her teacher was the modernist master Tadesse Mesfin.
Godine’s work is in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum (Washington, DC), Inhotim Museum (Brasil), and the Sharjah Foundation (UAE).
Hana Yilma Godine, Single Painting #9, 2022, Oil and fabric on canvas,
80 x 45 in.
Humbert Howard was a prominent African American artist and art director, celebrated for his contributions to the Philadelphia art scene. Howard’s works are held in numerous public collections, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.
Madjeen Isaac, a first-generation Haitian-American, explores home, community, and belonging through hybridized landscapes.
Isaac holds a BFA from FIT and an MA from NYU, and is a recipient of the 2024 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited at Smack Mellon and the Brooklyn Museum.
Madjeen Isaac, gonna search the sky for new horizons to unfold, 2024,
oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
Fidelis Joseph’s painting practice fuses his life experiences in Nigeria and the U.S. Moving from figuration to abstraction, he evades straight-line narratives, focusing instead on complex impressions and emotions embedded in the human psyche.
An MFA graduate of the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art, he was awarded the Cranbrook Art Museum Purchase Prize in 2023.
Fidelis Joseph, In Dilemma, 2024, oil on canvas, 47 x 35 in.
Jerome Lagarrigue is renowned for powerful interpretations of his subjects’ interior, psychological spaces. He illustrated Maya Angelou’s book Poetry for Young People, and was commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to paint sets for a production of Tosca, and by Georges Lucas to create a painting commemorating the Star Wars trilogy.
Lagarrigue’s work is included in the traveling museum exhibition Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys. In addition to a number of notable private collections, his work is in the public collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Brooklyn Museum.
Jerome Lagarrigue, Night Swim, 2024, oil on board, 36 x 36 in.
Originally from Gaudelupe, the French West Indies, Naomi Lisiki explores ideas of womanhood, philosophy and spirituality. Lush Caribbean flora was a consistent part of her upbringing and continues to serve as a source of inspiration today.
Lisiki received her B.F.A in Fine Arts from The Cooper Union in 2018 and her M.F.A in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art in 2020.
A student of Jacob Lawrence, Charles Alston and Robert Balckburn, Dindga McCannon’s pioneering mixed-object quilts, paintings and prints connect the artists of the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement of today. In 1971, together with Faith Ringgold, Dindga co-founded the first African-American artists collective, Where We At Black Women Artists Inc.
Her work is in the collections of The National Gallery of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum, among others.
Dindga McCannon, the bassist, 2008, Mixed media quilt on canvas, 12 x 12 in.
Wura-Natasha Ogunji’s poetic work depicts bodies in states of suspension between timelines and geographies. She lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria, where she moved in 2012 on a Guggenheim Fellowship to create a series of performances about the presence of women in public spaces.
Ogunji’s work is held in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, and the Smithsonian African Art Museum. She has exhibited at major institutions including the Museum of Modern Art Paris and Palais de Tokyo, and participated in the 2022 Sydney Biennial, 2020 Stellenbosch Triennale, 2018 São Paulo Biennial, and 2017 Kochi-Muziris Biennale.
Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Bird, ink, acrylic, collage on tracing paper, 24 x 24 in
Tigist Yoseph Ron is known for her distinct charcoal-and-erasing drawings. Ron’s artwork often focuses on themes of motherhood and femininity, which is reflected in the sense of softness and simplicity charcoal and create. In her most recent body of work, which Being comes from, Ron pivots to explore the emotional dissonance between her and her late father. She tracks their estranged relationship in her hazy, layered recreations based on memories distantly observing him.
Tigist Yoseph Ron, being, 2024, charcoal on paper, 58 1/2 x 33 in.