Sophie Friedman-Pappas (b. 1995, New York, NY) left New York for Los Angeles in 2021 to enroll at UCLA, where she received her MFA in 2024. Now Friedman-Pappas divides her time between NYC and LA sharing endless stories of utilitarian reappropriation, waste valorization, and the accidental undermining of these projects by their own patrons and designers. She shapes these stories as historical fictions that end with disappearance, whether that be the difference among materials dissolved or the narrative’s players’ personhood gone. The buildings in Manhattan’s Financial District turn into kilns, burnt lovers in a dovecote-cum-Airbnb become glaze on its walls, and the horse from the Wall Street bombing of 1920 gleefully loses identification with himself. One way or the other they finish with orgiastic meltdowns and main characters turned into glue, glass, or nitroglycerin.
Her past solo and two-person exhibitions include: List Projects 28: Sophie Friedman-Pappas and TJ Shin at MIT List Center, Cambridge (2023-2024); Lacker at in lieu, Los Angeles (2023) with Maren Karlson; Hannah Black and Sophie Friedman-Pappas at Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York (2022); and Transfer Station at Alyssa Davis Gallery, New York (2021) organized by Octagon (Moira Sims). Selected group exhibitions include Scupper at Francois Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2024); Unlife: Part II at Soft Opening, London (2024); Unlife: Part I at Soft Opening at Paul Soto, Los Angeles (2023); Inaugural Show at Bodenrader, Chicago (2023); Scouring at Meredith Rosen Gallery, New York (2022); and The Devil Knows at Simone Subal, New York (2022). She has participated in residencies at Kotoki, Serifos (2023); Pergamena Parchment, Montgomery (2022); and was an Artist Partner at Freshkills Park, Staten Island (2020).