In painting, Fricke embraces the physical labor of her medium by building up and scraping away layers of paint. Her process obscures and remakes forms to mirror the natural and mathematical structures that organize life. These include Fibonacci sequences, cellular division, and cosmic coiling. These systems embody both chaos and order. They echo the universe’s continuous return and the human impulse to rebuild. Through this, her process becomes a meditation on transformation and a form of optimistic future theory that engages with the erotic tension between destruction and creation.
In collage, Fricke works with found media and digital fragments to trace how images of the body, particularly feminized and queer bodies, are reproduced and recoded in the post-internet age. Through her archive of American symbology, she cuts, displaces, and reconstructs identity. Her work explores the loop of production, consumption, desire, and resistance that defines the American Dream. The compositions often reference traditional American quilt patterns, which have long been used to tell stories of lineage and cultural resistance. Informed by technofeminist theory and Paul B. Preciado’s concept of pharmaco-pornographic power, she examines how desire, identity, and sexuality are mediated through networks of algorithms, pornography, and mass imagery. Fricke asks whether the body remains natural or has become an abstracted tool of political subjugation- detached, commodified, and redefined to reinforce dominant American ideologies.
Across both painting and collage, Fricke is drawn to systems of circulation, whether through light, data, or flesh. She investigates how these systems generate both power and resistance, creating a space where transformation and renewal remain possible.