"Transmission I", 2010.
C-print silicone-mounted on glass 260 x 139.5 cm.
Cabinet Magazine, Issue 38 Summer 2010, illustrated.
Maria Friberg e.a, "Changed Positions", 2015, compare image p. 44 - 45.
Maria Friberg's "Transmission" project considers the automobile both as an icon of freedom and mobility and as a vehicle for irreversible environmental impact. The cars in the series were photographed from underneath while resting on a large sheet of glass, giving them the appearance of ships sailing on the surface of a calm ocean or airplanes crossing a clear, blue sky. By suppressing the fetishized visible figure of the car in favour of its infrastructural undercarriage, the images celebrate the automobile—whose beauty extends even to its functional core—even as they lament the ecological damage produced by this usually hidden machinery.
Quote from www.cabinetmagazine.org
Maria Friberg was a Swedish artist who primarily worked with photography and videography. Her primary theme was masculinity, whereby she investigated the traditional male adopted roles and its properties which has through history been defined as "masculine". Since her breakthrough in the 1990s alongside other female photographers who were educated at Gothenburgs photography school, Friberg has offered his growing audience enigmatic, powerful, and imaginative staged images of men. They float tranquilly in pool water, are squeezed into cars, sometimes sleeping among white sheets, or only their lower halves are visible as they sit in suits at a table. She works with staged photography and often uses art historical references. Friberg likes to work in series, varying a motif across multiple works. Some of her most well-known series are "Still Lives" and "Almost There."
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