MARIA MIESENBERGER
Through conceptually based photography and three-dimensional sculptures Maria Miesenberger forms interpretations and issues of personal, jointly held human conditions of life and the inescapable paradoxes of existence. Her art is marked by a continual investigation of how identity is created, affected and modified. In many of her works she dwells on and problematizes the memory of the child and childhood as, as it were, a created subject.
Maria Miesenberger’s work uses the human body as a cast and starting point for narratives about existence and identity. The presence of childhood and youth in her work is both symbolic and realistic. Her personal relationship to her models, a kinship or a friendship, offers deep identification with the content of these narratives. The effect of something well-known, the presence of solicitude, lends a calm strength to her many-faceted work.
Maria Miesenberger is always physically present in her craftsmanship and is involved in every step of the production while her works are being executed. She selects material following an idea, moving freely among such diverse means of expression as photography, metal, glass and textiles, using techniques that all serve the thought and the idea. In the process the material is fused into a work in which form, thought and content become one, inseparable.
Maria Miesenberger’s project entitled Sverige/Schweden is forever inscribed in the history of Swedish photography. Sverige/Schweden recounts the memories and circumstances of several generations, how the occurrence and experience of trauma in the war and the shadow of the Holocaust led to immigration to Sweden and how that shadow coined an identity, a childhood and a family’s history. This underlying sounding board, this perspective, sheds colour and runs like a red thread through the content of all Maria Miesenberger’s work.
In her work Maria Miesenberger causes personal experience to become a general account of the human experience of relations, absence, presence, dreams and memories.
Maria Miesenberger, born 1965 in Lund, currently lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. Maria Miesenberger studied at Konstfack – University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, 1991-95, and at Parsons School of Design in New York, 1995-96.
Maria Miesenberger’s work has been exhibited at Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Carl Eldhs Ateljémuseum, Stockholm; Konsthallen i Hishult; Skövde konsthall; Läckö slott, Lidköping; Strandverket, Marstrand; Norrköpings konstmuseum; Kulturhuset Stadsteatern, Stockholm; Artipelag, Värmdö; Liljevalchs, Stockholm; BildMuseet Umeå; Museum of Artistic Process and Public Art, Lund; Galleri Arnstedt, Östra Karup; Galerie Anhava, Helsinki; Robert Mann Gallery, New York; and Swedish Consulate in Los Angeles, among others.
Maria Miesenberger has received numerous awards and grants such as the 2011 Swedish Photobook Prize for the book Sverige/Schweden, The Stockholms City Honorary Award in Art 2015 and she has twice been the recipient of the Swedish Arts Grants Committee's five-year work grant.
Maria Miesenberger’s work is in the permanent collection of Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Public Art Agency Sweden; Stockholm konst; The Bonnier Group, Stockholm; Stockholm School of Economics; Malmö Konstmuseum; Göteborgs Konstmuseum; Norrköpings Konstmuseum; Skissernas Museum – Arkiv för dekorativ konst, Lund; Skövde Konstmuseum; Jönköpings Läns Museum; Linköpings kommun; and The Henry Buhl Collection, US, among others.
Half an Angel (2001), the 8-meter-high sculpture at Telenor's head office in Oslo is one of Miesenberger's many public works, others include Moment in Motion at Enskedegård subway station in Stockholm (2014), Change of Direction (2016), Restad Gård, Vänersborg and currently installed at Artipelag, Värmdö, Reflection on the Presence of Time (2016), Norrköping, Hoppet, Övre Vasastaden (2018), Linköping and Möjligheternas Portal (2018) - a memorial for Ebba Ramsey's park in Jönköping.
Miesenberger is currently working on several public commissions; Forced to a Change for Nya Tingstorget in Alby, Botkyrka and a memorial for the resistance against the Nazi regime during the Second World War for Norrköping/Botrygg.