Joya: AiR / Dianna Frid / USA

“While at Joya: AiR, I was able to merely begin to sort through dozens of photographs that I took while doing research at the Burgoa Library in Oaxaca, Mexico. As simple as this sounds, it is a daunting prospect for someone like me, who typically works hands-on-matter. With respect to the latter, I was happy to walk many miles around the Sierra Maria - Los Vélez where Joya: AiR is situated. In doing so, the matter of landscape—and the substances and lifeforms with which it is teeming—offered time to think about and sense the potentials of mud, clay, and time. I spent long moments observing ants of different clans moving relative mountains, sorting through leaves and dead matter, and getting on with collaborative life force. I noticed micro-climates as one ascends mountains and hills (of which there are many). There were smells and sounds new to me. Most of all the silence, the stars one moon-less night, and the bees. I came with a suitcase, a pencil, and a sketchbook. And left with less than what I brought. This was part of the experiment”.

Dianna Frid

Dianna Frid studied in the US at Hampshire College and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Last summer she became full Professor in the Art Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she has been tenured since 2013. Early in her career she received several Canada Council for the Arts Awards (2000, 2008, 2009, 2012). She has lived in Chicago since 1999 and has been awarded grants from the Illinois Arts Council (2003, 2014), Artadia (2004) and 3Arts (2018).

Most recently, she has exhibited her work at the DePaul Art Museum and the National Museum of Mexican Art (both in Chicago). She is currently preparing for a one-person artist’s book exhibit at the Alan Koppel Gallery (Chicago) and an artist-poet reading with Victoria Chang for the Dia Foundation in New York.

“A note on this playlist: “Tunes from Obituaries” is a cumulative playlist not based on predilections. Instead, it is comprised of musicians, composers, conductors, and producers whose obituaries I have come across in the New York Times. There are the household names, but this collection of tunes goes beyond that, and it is connected to my ongoing project “Words from Obituaries” (2010 – present)”.