Introduced by the artist; Q&A with artist and featured storytellers follows the screening.

The “Sky Woman Women” project holds space for eighteen women storytellers from Mohawk, Seneca and Tuscarora tribal affiliations (enrolled, unenrolled, and not enrolled), telling and retelling the story of Sky Woman to each other.

The Sky Woman creation story is about a pregnant woman falling through a hole in the sky, who, with courage and gratitude, creates a whole world from a handful of dirt. The story acts as a guide from a woman’s perspective in dealing with the natural world and maintaining balance within it, by acknowledging our kinship, inter-dependence and co-creation with the plants and animals that sustain us.

The telling of this Haudenosaunee creation story is an oral tradition primarily told by men. One aspect that is unique to this project is that the filmed conversation holds space for a multi-generational collective of women between the ages of 8 and 80. Throughout the course of the film, we become aware that learning and change at an individual and societal level begins with people coming together and talking, as happens in an oral tradition.

This event is cosponsored by the Loeb and the Film Department. Sky Woman Women was created with assistance from 2024 Anonymous Was A Woman Environmental Art Grant in partnership with New York Foundation for the Arts.

About Dara Friedman

Dara Friedman, Vassar Class of 1990, is a German born artist and filmmaker working in Miami. She uses everyday sights and sounds as the raw material for film and video artworks that reverberate with emotional energy. With a background in structural film and dance, Friedman’s cinema calls for a radical reduction of the medium to its most essential material properties. In place of linear storylines, her films typically portray straightforward actions and situations that unfold according to predetermined rules and guidelines.

Yet for all of Friedman’s strenuous logic and discipline, her approach remains unabashedly sensual and emotive. Bearing rich imagery and a strong emphasis on bodily experience, her films generate moments of high-pitched, cathartic intensity as well as serene, even euphoric interludes. Friedman’s solo exhibitions include: The Tiger’s Tail, San Carlo Cremona, Italy (2022), Harburger Kunstverein (2019), a mid-career survey Dara Friedman: Perfect Stranger, Pérez Art Museum Miami (2017–2018), accompanied by a catalog raisonée published by Prestel, Aspen Art Museum (2017) and more.