Matthew Friday is an educator, writer and transdisciplinary artist whose research focuses on the development of apparatuses and systems that examine and provoke new political ecologies. Working both collectively and individually, Matthew Friday’s research-based projects have taken up issues of urban ecology, watershed remediation and the history and future of organized labor. He is an active member of the ecosystem research and design collective SPURSE. SPURSE’s recent publication, Eat Your Sidewalk, a philosophical cookbook that examines the entanglement of nature and culture through communities that practice subsistence foraging and hunting, was described by René Redzepi, Chef and Co-owner of NOMA as, “[…] exactly the kind of philosophical look at foraging that is needed today”.
Over the past few years, Matthew Friday has spoken internationally about ecology, aesthetics and politics at venues such as NYU, Penn State and Kunsthal Aarhus (Denmark). His essays have appeared in October, the Journal of Modern Craft, the Journal Aesthetics and Protest, the Brooklyn Rail and Art Journal.
Matthew Friday has exhibited at a number of venues including the Whitney Museum of American Art Open Studios, Wave Hill, the University of Buffalo Art Department Gallery, 1708 Gallery (Richmond), the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, the Center for Contemporary Arts in St. Louis, Ohio State University Urban Art Center, Spaces (Cleveland) and the Indianapolis Art Center. As part of SPURSE, Friday has exhibited at the MassMOCA, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Grand Arts, White Columns, the Kitchen, Bemis Art Center, Kunsthal Aarhus and the BMW Guggenheim LAB. His work has been reviewed in October, the New Art Examiner, Dwell and Art Papers and has been included in several catalogs including The Interventionists (MassMOCA) and Experimental Geography (Creative Time/ Independent Curators International).
Matthew Friday studied at the Slade School or Art, the University of New Mexico and the Whitney Independent Study Program and earned his MFA from Indiana State University. An educator with over twenty years of experience teaching, Friday has taught in a number of different institutions and settings including the State University of New York at Oswego, Empire College (NYC) and Ohio University and now serves as graduate coordinator and associate professor of critical studies for the Art Department at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Friday’s work has been supported with a number of grants including the New York Federation for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Initiative grant and an Andrew Mellon funded Art and Environment project award through Pitzer College.
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