ARTIST
MARIA FRIBERG
Art at the Plaza
Maria Friberg - "Almost there"
The artist Maria Friberg (b. 1966, Malmö) is a Swedish visual artist working with photography and video, based in Stockholm. Her works often revolve around how images shape notions of power, masculinity, and group belonging. The series Almost there (2000) is a central example of this.
Background
Friberg was educated at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm (1989–95), as well as at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts in Reykjavik and the Nordic Art School in Kokkola. She lives and works in Stockholm.
Working methods & technique
Friberg repeatedly works with staged photographs and video. In her image-making she uses models and controlled environments to create concentrated scenes where body, clothing, and materials become key visual components. In Almost there she works with men in suits in water – a scene staged for the camera.
Subjects & themes
A recurring focus is how masculinity, order, and social structures are rendered visually. In the text for Almost there Friberg describes the suit as modernism’s “uniform” and directs her gaze towards the boundary between surface and undercurrent – an “in-between space” where control and uncertainty coexist.
About the work "Almost there 3"
ALMOST THERE 3 is a photographic work from the series Almost there (2000). The image shows business-dressed men floating in a swimming pool, captured in a state of pause and weightlessness. In printed form, the work appears as a Cibachrome (face-mounted to glass), in a limited edition.