Derived from Miesenberger’s private family album the darkly, evocative images of the Sverige/Schweden series create
a narrative of epical proportions. Simultaneously sinister and sweet, they disclose and conceal, confront and evade
their apparent content: the dreams and nightmares from the memory banks of a childhood. By re-presenting her
father’s images of her childhood in Austria and Sweden, Maria Miesenberger transforms these images to another order
of speech. The photographed persons are no longer recognized as individuals. They are set afloat as dark hollow
shapes in the image. As the detail and nuances are darkened they become trapdoors in the pictorial surface, leaving
us alone with our projections and associations. In these innocent looking images of the small nuclear family an
inherited memory is hidden but present, the father’s childhood in Austria in the presence of war and genocide is hiding
behind the shadows.
Maria Miesenberger, born in Lund, Sweden 1965, studied photography, and painting at the University College of Arts,
Crafts and Design (Konstfack), Stockholm, and sculpture at Parsons School of Design, New York, USA. Her
photographical and sculptural work has been shown in various solo and group exhibitions at galleries and institutions
including venues at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Bildmuseet Ume°a University, Sweden, Fotomuseum Winterthur,
Switzerland, and The ICP, New York, among others.
Short Story by Elfriede Jelinek
Sverige/Schweden
