Dwora Fried BIG BOX/little box

About

Los Angeles, December 2015- Artist Dwora Fried creates tiny tableaux inside glass fronted boxes and large interactive experiences with her exhibitionBIG BOX little box. She populates her smaller work with vintage dolls, toys and furniture from the 50’s — photographs, fabrics, plastic, wood and metal. These small rooms evoke her experience growing up as an outsider in postwar Vienna. Being Jewish, lesbian and a child of holocaust survivors, Fried learned to see everything through the prism of loss, danger and secrecy. In addition to the small mixed media dioramas, the artist built a life-size replica of one of the small boxes allowing the viewers to personally engage with and become part of the artwork. You can see her work at the Los Angeles Art Association opening on January 16th from 6-9pm.

Art critic Shana Nys Dambrot writes, “The diorama box recalls that most universal of middle school assignments — to build a model of the solar system, for example, or your family portrait, a book report, the signing of the Declaration. But for an adult such as mixed media assemblagist and painter Dwora Fried, this childlike (not to be confused with childish) exercise offers the perfect way to re-examine issues and memories surfacing from childhood as a personal matter, as well as to deconstruct the context of those experiences in a more historical or cultural mode. 

Dwora Fried is a Los Angeles artist working with assemblage and installation. She was born in Vienna, Austria and lived there until moving to Israel to go to college. There she received her BA from Tel Aviv University and studied at the Avni School of Fine Arts. In 1978, she moved to Los Angeles, CA and became an American citizen. Fried has exhibited widely in California. In 2013, she had a solo exhibition titled “Outsider in a Box” at the Jewish Museum in Venice, Italy. Five of her artworks are also in the permanent collection of the MUSA Museum in Vienna, Austria.