Maria Miesenberger Swedish, b. 1965

Maria Miesenberger is one of the most acclaimed artists in Sweden. She had her breakthrough in the 1990s with her iconic photographic series Sverige/Schweden. Her suggestive black and white images with their conspicuous black silhouettes are forever inscribed in Swedish photographic history. Since then, Miesenberger ́s work has shown great material diversity and technical curiosity. Her sculptural materials range from textile, aluminum, bronze and stainless steel to ceramic granite. In addition to these materials, she experiments with glass moldings, resulting in almost holographic sculptures. By combining the figurative and the abstract, Miesenberger wants to illuminate the inseparable relationship between physical and mental.

Miesenberger’s imagery exists on many different levels. It spans opposites such as present and past, dark and light, the individual and the collective, joy and sorrow. The artist is not interested in telling her own story. Instead, she throws the question back on the viewer, asking what is your history, what is your story, your experience? Her art is imbued with a strong vein of curiosity paired with a large portion of humility. Taking the self and the individual as her starting point, she is able to pose highly and constantly relevant questions about what it actually means to be human.

Maria Miesenberger Born in 1965 in Lund, lives and works in Stockholm. She studied at Konstfack, Stockholm (1991-95) and at Parsons School of Design, New York (1995-96). Between 1995-2003 she lived and worked in New York. Maria Miesenberger has had about 50 solo exhibition in Europa and in the US. She is represented in the collection of The Bonnier Group, Moderna Museet Stockholm, Malmö Konstmuseum and Norrköpings Konstmusum, as well as The Henry Buhl Collection, US. She 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. 

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 further 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.