Freedom by Zenos Frudakis

What is the context?

"I wanted to create a sculpture almost anyone, regardless of their background, could look at and instantly recognize that it is about the idea of struggling to break free. This sculpture is about the struggle for achievement of freedom through the creative process."
- Zenos Frudakis

This life size sculpture titled Freedom was created by Zenos Frudakis in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in June of 2001. It stands eight feet tall and twenty feet long and is made out of bronze. This sculptor is well known for making his monuments out of bronze. He makes his pieces available for the public to see. Of all his sculptures made, Freedom is the most highly known by people around the world. He has made many statues of famous, historic figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Einstein, and Winston Churchill. Frudakis' interest in sculpting began at an early age and ever since then, he has nurtured his interest to create the astounding figures that are there today.

In his sculpture, Frudakis added personal elements into it. His friend, a sculptor who had died of AIDS, had always talked about seeing something he had made available for the public to see. So he took what his friend had made and made it a part of his sculpture for all to see, as his friend had wished. He also added the face of his cat to it so there were little things on it personal to him. In the process of making the sculpture, he initially made a small model of it using clay and from there he began and built Freedom.


What is the artist communicating and how?

When Frudakis came up with the idea, he wanted to sculpt something that would be easy for a passerby in a car to figure out and understand the meaning of it. As clearly stated by the title of it, the focus of the piece is about escaping one’s mold and reaching the desired freedom from it. The use of bronze made to look like clay explained the idea that humans are born from earth and are thus made from that mold of clay and mud. The way the bronze was molded made it look as if completely made of dragging fingers marks on the clay, making indents. By doing this, Frudakis further represented the struggle of humanity to achieve freedom from whatever individual is unmolding from. His piece was all about breaking free from our own molds and becoming people, our own individuals.

The final step of the man, essentially now free, was made smooth with no finger indents, as if there was no longer a struggle. It was just purely smooth and slick like water that is free to take whatever shape it wishes, just as the man is now free from the mold to take whatever shape he wants. Each little detail in the sculpture, like the mini persons at the bottom freeing themselves and the coins, which were added to represent how money and art are related, presents the viewers with more to look at and find.

Another theme Frudakis wanted people to take away from his piece was the process of sculpting and how figures are made from a rough draft and fixed to become a finished product. This was shown in the progression of the body in the sculpture from the left to the right. Frudakis wanted it so that there was more than just one basic theme going on at once that could be understood from what he made. He wanted people to be able to interact with it emotionally, intellectually, and physically. Thus he wrote “stand here” in the fourth stage so people would experience what it felt like to be in a mold, struggling for freedom and become a part of the piece themselves.

Why do you find it beautiful?

Frudakis, through this sculpture, had created a beautiful way of depicting the concept of freedom. He did not use any sort of colors because the path to freedom is not something colorful or anything, and even then, having a certain freedom can be frightening. It is amazing how he was able to make bronze look just like clay. His thought of making indentations like fingers grabbing and clawing out was brilliant. The sculpture has a simplistic concept and nature to it, yet such thought was put into making it, with what to make it with and how to precisely sculpt each piece.

It was particularly intriguing how Frudakis made the piece interactive for people to experience. I loved that he did that, because it draws people in to look at it more closely and notice the other aspects of the sculpture, like the little Easter eggs he hid in there for people to find. Anyone walking by can take time and find a new thing at each viewing. He sculpted something that many people experience at some point or another. I loved the way he showed the progression towards freedom stage by stage, so that the feeling could be truly understood.