Elri Friedmanselected Wall Works
Tattoo
About
Contact
CV
Elri Friedman (b. Baltimore, 1993) works in an expanded painting practice that moves between painting, drawing, and wall-based assemblage. Rooted in a background in Philosophy of Biology, their work approaches abstraction as a site of morphological change, where differentiation and entanglement unfold simultaneously.
Friedman recombines paintings, tape, tarps, and other plastics into abstract compositions rooted in the wound and the lived body, where mending and mark-making become indistinguishable. Their work plays with fluctuation and fixity, often requiring an unstable mode of reading that operates through insinuation, as forms actively negotiate their coherence before you.
They came of age creatively as a tattoo artist, teaching artist, and community arts organizer in Seattle, within a scene shaped by experimental drag, performance, and techno. These collective, improvisational conditions continue to structure their studio practice, where materials recombine and differentiate, carrying forward an investment in how unfamiliar and unrecognizable forms come into being. Their work is also informed by an interest in the political history of abstraction, particularly its contradictory mobilization as both a site of resistance and a tool of ideological control.
They are spending the ‘26-’27 year completing a Berlin-based Fulbright project making paintings, and doing archival research on censored artworks. Friedman is also the recipient of 2026 Dedalus MFA Fellowship and received their MFA from the University of Oregon in 2026.
Tattoo
About
Contact
CV
Friedman recombines paintings, tape, tarps, and other plastics into abstract compositions rooted in the wound and the lived body, where mending and mark-making become indistinguishable. Their work plays with fluctuation and fixity, often requiring an unstable mode of reading that operates through insinuation, as forms actively negotiate their coherence before you.
They came of age creatively as a tattoo artist, teaching artist, and community arts organizer in Seattle, within a scene shaped by experimental drag, performance, and techno. These collective, improvisational conditions continue to structure their studio practice, where materials recombine and differentiate, carrying forward an investment in how unfamiliar and unrecognizable forms come into being. Their work is also informed by an interest in the political history of abstraction, particularly its contradictory mobilization as both a site of resistance and a tool of ideological control.
They are spending the ‘26-’27 year completing a Berlin-based Fulbright project making paintings, and doing archival research on censored artworks. Friedman is also the recipient of 2026 Dedalus MFA Fellowship and received their MFA from the University of Oregon in 2026.