Kayne Griffin Corcoran is pleased to present a new work by Dara Friedman, Mother Drum, filmed throughout the summer of 2015 on the Swinomish Reservation in Washington, Coeur d'Alene Reservation in Idaho, and Crow Agency Reservation in Montana.

The genus of this project was a 2014 archaeological dig in downtown Miami, where Friedman is based, which uncovered the remnants of the ancient, aboriginal city of Tequesta. The contemporary city, dense with high-rise developments, had for the most part ignored the history of its native inhabitants. But this sacred ground lies directly beneath the condos that populate its skyline, surrounding this site, encasing it in steel and glass. The following summer, Friedman placed an advertisement on PowWows.com, asking Native American Fancy Dancers and drummers to take part in her project, and traveled to pow wows in the West to meet with those who replied. The film, Mother Drum, is a result of those meetings.

The people in the film participated explicitly for Friedman's camera, separate from the larger events taking place at the pow wows. The power of the drum is the central, healing character throughout Friedman’s work. In the artist's words, “the dusty and undeniable metaphysics of the drum embody the Earth’s heartbeat; the beats vibrate a person's bones until they are both with and beyond themselves.”

Born in 1968 in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, Dara Friedman now lives and works in Miami. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York; MOCAD, Detroit; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; The Kitchen, New York; Kunstmuseum, Thun, Switzerland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Friedman will be the subject of an extensive retrospective at the Perez Museum in Miami, opening in October 2017.