Conversation with Maria Friberg

Text in Swedish

Maria Friberg was an artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts near San Francisco this year. Milou Allerholm contacted her through her hotmail address. The conversation took place over the course of a week at the end of April.

MA (Milou Allerholm): Hi Maria. I've finally managed to get myself in front of a computer. We're frozen to the bone here suffering through the Swedish spring and so it's of course nice to get reports from sunny California. I'm really curious to know if it's really the kind of dogmatic place that everyone these days says it is.A friend of mine told me recently that she had been asked to put out a cigarette that she was smoking outdoors on a veranda in L.A. Other preconceptions: no one drinks alcohol and no one eats any fatty foods that actually have fat in them. I don't want to sound like a decadent romantic European, but I can imagine that these things also leave their mark on the art scene.

"One thing I'm happy to see here is that so many grown men play around. They're on the beach for hours doing things, I don't know what they're doing and it doesn't matter: it looks like important little things. I've taken some pictures of men crawling on all fours totally concentrated on doing something." Maria Friberg

MF (Maria Friberg): The art scene in San Francisco is split in two. There are the commercial galleries that show really boring stuff, like abstract art, and then there are the "alternative" galleries that want to show contemporary art. But they don't have any money, so they only show artists from San Francisco or maybe L.A., and definitely nothing from outside the U.S. Some of the good alternative galleries here are Four Walls, Southern Exposure, and Luggage Store. They have cool spaces and a playful or slacker attitudeódepending on how you look at it. The rules are different here; I can imagine your friend's story with the cigarette. One the other hand, everyone smokes pot here as if it grows like weeds. The guiding principle seems to be to have a nice, wholesome life. Organic food, computers, bicycles rides in the mountains, smoking pot, and sunsets are all part of this. It's easy to relax here. It feels both restricted and really nice at the same time.

Maria Friberg: "Somewhere else" 1998 photo 100 x 400 cm

MA: Maybe that's why so many Swedes who do a residence at the Headlands do such good work during their stay, it's like a stoner Protestant work ethic. Are you doing a particular project right now, have you started something there?

MF: One thing I'm happy to see here is that so many grown men play around. They're on the beach for hours doing things, I don't know what they're doing and it doesn't matter: it looks like important little things. I've taken some pictures of men crawling on all fours totally concentrated on doing something. I'm going to take more pictures of situations like this, where you don't understand what they're playing, just that they're playing.

I've done another project here that's more finished; it's a photo of a man in the middle of a big mass of foam. The man is bald and in his 40s, you only see his head and a little of his chest. Otherwise, he's just surrounded by this big white thing that looks like snow or cappucino froth, or some alien substance. You can't tell. (It's actually sea foam). He doesn't look scared, despite the dramatic foam, he looks like he's just there.

The photo is like my photo of a man lying on a bed surrounded by a sea of sheets. (I sent you an invite from the Frankfurt show by the way, did you get it?) In that photo as well, you basically see a head lost in space. I started to think about Salome and went to the library and looked at all the loose heads flying around in art history. It's swarming with them.

MA: Your observation of the men playing for hours lord knows what - "important little things " - is fascinating. Your descriptions have made me curious and I look forward to seeing the photos: it sounds like an exciting continuation of your earlier work. You're beginning to create a huge portfolio of work around men and images of masculinity today. I'm thinking, for example, of the video and photo Confront Me Back where a man is sitting between the two front seats of a car. You see that he must be sitting exactly where the gearshift would be. The image opens itself up to many different angles, but the most obvious one is the idea of being in between - his place is between the man's seat (the driver's seat) and the woman's seat (the passenger seat). The photo addresses both social structures, that prescribe different "spaces" for men and women, as it were, and also sexual identity, where the man seems to find himself in a liminal space. At the same time, the gearshift that we don't see but would have been right there lends the image a possible homoerotic dimension. If I remember correctly, you get the feeling that the man himself doesn't quite know where to sit. His position "in between" is not really a comfortable one.

I'm also thinking about your proposal for the Statens Konstråd (The Swedish Public Art Council) competition last year for the project "Platser" (Places). You wanted to project a video of a man in the two small triumphal arches on Riksgatan Street by the Parliament. You were supposed to see only the man's body from the chest down, and he was supposed to disappear completely into the monumental architecture, so to speak. When a passerby would come close, a motion detector was supposed to activate the video and the man would bend down toward the ground, toward the passerby, with a small clumsy gesture. The work was called Ser att han försöker (You See That He's Trying). In the commissioned piece that you recently did for Statens Konstråd in Helsingborg you worked further with this imagery. There three photos of a man in a suit were silkscreened onto different shop windows in three new buildings in the Norra Hamnen part of town. The work is called Atlanter (Atlantes), which refers to the kinds of figures used as pillars in Antiquity. Every photo/atlas figure is five meters high, about the same height as the windows. The man is holding up his elbows toward the ceiling as if it were resting on him. As you write in your project description, he is "in a figurative sense the pillar on which society rests. It's a position that is both vulnerable and yet gives great freedom."

When I think about these pieces, the suit always comes to the foreground. The suit represents power, and is a sort of guarantee that everything will be reasonable and safe, that all the decisions will be well-grounded, and that the world facing the people in suits is as well-ordered as it could possibly be. Your images throw a wrench into this without becoming just flat critique. You create an ambiguity and let, so to speak, the irrationality (that of course is as much a part of the lives of men in suits as it is in anyone else's) trickle out. (My point of view here is definitely guided by my own constant fascination with how we try to plan and order our existence in a systematic and safe way, but that most things nevertheless happen by chance and that the most banal small things affect matters).

MF: What you say about Confront Me Back seems right to me, but you do actually see the gearshift. He's rubbing himself slowly against it looking somewhat puzzled. It's about the fact that it's O.K. to be in that uncertain in-between space, that you have to accept it.

I like what you wrote about yourself, that you try to plan and order your existence. I have conflicting thoughts about planning: it's infuriating when things don't go according to plan, but at the same time it can be an enormous relief that things turned out different. At this level, I recognize myself in the man.

MA: To connect this to the other piece you mentioned, there are a lot of free-floating heads in art history. What was it with Salome (and the head of poor John the Baptist) that interested you?

MF: The "loose" heads in my images are not decapitated; I'm more interested in images of heads where you can't see the body, where the body's in something else, in a large mass of disintegrating foam or in a sea of silk sheets. As fas as the Salome myth is concerned, I'm more interested in images of John the Baptist's head than in the myth itself. I'm also thinking of other pictures where free-floating heads with small wings fly around the body of the Virgin Mary. I see these as somewhat surreal, as something I don't quite understand, and that's what 's interesting: the irrational that you wrote about earlier.

MA: Many of your earlier works have had a tangible corporeality to them. But now you write that you're interested in the body being "in something else, in a large mass of disintegrating foam." Why?

MF: If you compare this photo to the earlier photos where there are men spruced up in suits, this one is about the split between the private, safe, sleeping, and less restrained person in contrast to the public person who is dressed and controlled. Two modes that I myself like a lot, but it's difficult for me to switch painlessly from one to the other.

"We began to talk, and it turned out that we shared a lot of the same ideas and problems about what we wanted to be when we grew up. As Pippi Longstocking says, "I never want to grow up." It's very much about the fact that I recognize myself in these boys in suits struggling with themselves, and with what you do with your dreams." Maria Friberg

MA: Hi again, tomorrow I'll be traveling down to Malmö and Helsingborg, in part to look at your piece in Helsingborg before I write the text for Statens Konstråd. I'll be back on Friday afternoon. I have one question in the meantime. During the 80s and 90s, lots of people did work around feminist issues, something that in recent years turned more into gender studies or queer theory. You work mainly with images of men. Can you discuss what's important for you in this work?

MF: It's been interesting to investigate a group I didn't have any relation to, I didn't know any "adult men" before. The whole thing started with a man buying one of my photos. We began to talk, and it turned out that we shared a lot of the same ideas and problems about what we wanted to be when we grew up. As Pippi Longstocking says, "I never want to grow up." It's very much about the fact that I recognize myself in these boys in suits struggling with themselves, and with what you do with your dreams.

One practical thing: I don't have computer access at the Headlands any more, so it's more tricky to email now, but I'll go to Internet cafés so that we can keep in contact. Today's Friday, I'll check again tomorrow. I leave for L.A. on Monday.

"I'm thinking of other atlantes I've seen. One I remember well was in a church in Viennaóa brawny figure who really looked like he was struggling to keep the heavy architecture in place. And that's how you think of these sculptures, as heroic. You can't look too frail if you're going to be carrying a house on your shoulders. This is where your atlas is differentóit gives a weaker and more everyday impression, the work balances between strength and vulnerability." Milou Allerholm

MA: Back from Helsingborg. I saw the commissioned piece with the three atlantes. Their size is impressive, it's hard to miss these five-meter men in suits when you go by the buildings. At the same time, they retreat into the buildings, it's not a piece you trip over physically.

To first come back to what you said before: it sounds like the fact that they're men is only one aspect of the work. You also talk about how you recognize yourself in them. The suits become a sign of masculinity, but the attributes traditionally taken to be "masculine" are as much questions for women. To invoke the basic gender studies distinction between sex and gender, what we call "masculine" and "feminine" has nothing to do with biological sex.

It would be interesting to compare this with Driven, the work you did together with Monika Larsen Dennis in January where you had a huge projection on the faÁade of the Kulturhuset. There were two men in suits there doing something that's difficult to figure out, something between dancing, wrestling, and embracing. One aspect of the work was that it was impossible to say whether they were men or women. The work shifted, like some of your earlier works, between tenderness and violence, proximity and distance, pain and pleasure. And it's not possible to ascribe a gender to the people in it either. Atlanter is both funny and touching; the man is, as you say in your project description, clearly stuck within a structure. "Every image has a different nuance-nuances of vulnerability, imperfection, and patience," you then go on to say. I'm thinking of other atlantes I've seen. One I remember well was in a church in Vienna - a brawny figure who really looked like he was struggling to keep the heavy architecture in place. And that's how you think of these sculptures, as heroic. You can't look too frail if you're going to be carrying a house on your shoulders. This is where your atlas is different - it gives a weaker and more everyday impression, the work balances between strength and vulnerability. A practical question about the work. Was it difficult to get the proposal through? I'm thinking for example of the architects. Have you heard what they think of the piece, which did after all come after the buildings?

"I think it would have been better with all of them in the same direction, it would have been stronger. It's still O.K. but I don't understand what they were so scared of. We see men in suits every day. It'd be better to try to relate to them." Maria Friberg

MF: There were no problems with the architects - they were very positive. But there were problems, on the other hand, with Statens Konstråd. They thought that my first proposal was Fascist, militant, too much about male power. They wondered how the average woman would react to these large men. In the proposal, I had all three atlantes facing the ocean, more in a straight line. I was forced to make the work milder by having them face different directions. One of them still faces the ocean. I think it would have been better with all of them in the same direction, it would have been stronger. It's still O.K. but I don't understand what they were so scared of. We see men in suits every day. It'd be better to try to relate to them.

With Driven, we were trying to both bridge and undermine the concepts of "masculine" and "feminine." As you say, the suit stands for potency and power. Potency is not gender-specific, but power is still to a certain extent.

MA: I've now re-read our emails, and I have a question. You wrote that " It's been interesting to investigate a group I didn't have any relation to, I didn't know any 'adult men' before." I'm not sure I understand what you mean

P.S. I guess you're off soon. Let me know in your answer whether this is our last exchange. If I don't reach you again, have a great trip!

MF: With "I didn't know any 'adult men' before," I meant that I hadn't been in contact with adult men in suits before. I don't know any in my personal life, and I didn't grow up with any men in my family. So this is completely new territory for me.

Yes, this will have to be the last round. Hope all's well with you in Stockholm. Talk to you soon.

Footnote: Maria Friberg then disappeared into the American wilderness in a pink Cadillac that Anders Boqvist left behind after his Headlands residency last fall.