The first monograph of Friedman’s work, Star, explores the artist’s ongoing Performance Proposal, Pathwork series and her holistic studio process. Featuring full-color plates from her titular exhibition at Kendra Jayne Patrick in Bern, Switzerland (October 11-December 13, 2025), as well as recent studio documentation taken by the artist and Ernst Fischer in Brooklyn and the Texas Hill Country.

An introduction by and conversation with Liz Hirsch gives readers insight into Friedman’s curiosity, outlook, and experience.

An essay by Elizabeth Buhe contextualizes movement and ritual within the realm of Friedman’s paintings. She closes with this evocative reflection:

Like the desire paths that people’s footsteps forge in urban infrastructure when they deviate, as Sara Ahmed puts it, “from the paths they are supposed to follow,” Friedman’s work cuts through vertical-thinking. And this is how, so unusually, it exists across time and space, engaging pre-industrial worldviews, ancient means of transmitting culture, folklore, and the movement that her Bridges and Thresholds imply. Friedman’s works are charged with the potential of performance as ritual, showing how ritual can be deployed as a process without claiming its social or spiritual authority.

This publication was made possible by generous support from the Grant Wood Art Colony, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.