Marla Friedman

Hollis Taggart is pleased to announce artist Marla Friedman’s sculptural exploration of The Oneness of Humanity, The Subtleties of Expression. Our human relatedness to one another and all sentient beings.

Two of the world’s most beloved spiritual leaders, the Dalai Lama and the late Desmond Tutu shared a remarkable friendship rooted in joy, respect, and a sense of higher purpose. Tutu fondly recounted the almost immediate kindred connection they shared: “He’s always teasing me... Maybe the first time [the Dalai Lama] was a little reserved, but by the second time [he] was taking my cap off my head. I don’t know that you wake up in the morning and say I’m going to become a friend to the Dalai Lama. It just happens.”

Despite inhabiting different faith traditions and backgrounds––Tutu was an Anglican priest dedicated to fighting against the apartheid in South Africa and the Dalai Lama is Tibet’s Buddhist spiritual leader who has been exiled for over fifty years––the two men found an unimpeachable bond in pouring out their lives in service of others. They considered themselves “mischievous brothers,” sharing a common love for the world and a deep-seated belief in the oneness of humanity. In her evocative sculpture of these two men, Marla Friedman has captured the essence of not just these two spiritual leaders, but also the essence of their friendship. In the sculpture, Tutu’s finger lightly grazes the Dalai Lama’s cheek in a symbolic reflection of the tenderness and profundity they shared. While the textured base gestures at the gravitas and enormous struggle of the lives and missions of these two men, the sculpture also hints at their sense of childlike joy and humor through their subtle facial expressions. While close together, they look outward in the same direction, instantiating their shared intention of carrying forth compassion and kindness for all beings.

This sculpture exemplifies Friedman’s masterful ability to capture not only the physical likenesses of her subjects, but also the intangible sense of their presence and inner spirit. Known for her sensitive rendering and careful process of observation and close research, Friedman describes her practice of sculpting figures as “listening,” in both an aural and spiritual sense. Beginning with a block of clay she allows the clay and “spirit” to lead her. Her works emerge out of an openness to the lived experience of the subject, resulting in a kind of felt ineffability that goes beyond factual representation.

Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama forged their lives out of the belief in the fundamental connectivity of humans, to which Friedman’s inspired sculpture gives form. At a public event before Tutu’s passing in 2021, the Dalai Lama poignantly turned to Tutu and remarked, “I think, at the time of my death, I will remember you.” Their cherished friendship, marked by equal measures of sanctity and laughter, was a celebration of life. In the face of brutality and exile, the two men have always sought out reconciliation and tirelessly searched for the ways in which we are, in the last analysis, all interlinked and related. “My humanity is bound up in yours,” Desmond Tutu reflected in 1999, “for we can only be human together.” Friedman’s nuanced sculpture suggests as much: the work of faith and art both speak to the same desire to give form to that which escapes language, namely, our fundamental commonness and interwoven fates.