Maria Bjurestam

Born 1961 in Örnsköldsvik. Lives in Stockholm. Educated at The Valand Academy of Fine Arts in Gothenburg 1990-95 and at the Hochschule für bildende Kunste in Hamburg 1994-96.

During studies at the Valand 1990-93 I participated in the projects ”YELLO”, “19:th Floor”,( collaborate sound works) ”STRUT” and ”Be Connected - Artists showing artists”(with Cecilia Darle, Vanja Gyllensköld, Gunilla Hansson, Annika Lundgren, Susanna Nygren, Cecilia E Parsberg, Marie Sjölander, Elin Wikström - see Valandsgruppen, The Valand group).

In 1995 I ran “the TELEPHONE Gallery” (Telefongalleriet)- art on an answering machine - with Malin Lobell. We also ran the apartment gallery HALLEN in Gothenburg 1992-94. In connection to the exhibition “If you show yours, I´ll show mine” 2001, (Om du visar din så visar jag min), we made the happening THE CONTACT PARTY at Linköpings Kunsthalle with Katinka Ahlbom, Anna Persson and Passagen Family.

My artistic work is in the areas of space, the body and language. I want to ask questions about positions, expectations and meaning to visitors in quiet conversations where I also speak to the visitor’s body. Sculptures experienced from within, passages, thresholds and words situated in a room.

Space is seen as a place, where the visitor can become aware of his or her body as an object. Movement patterns are created with passages and obstacles where the visitor as subject makes choices and in this way influences her experience of the room. Words name, refer to and generate physical and mental perceptions. Depending on the visitor’s and the word’s placement in the room, fragments of fictive dialogues or individual words are influenced by what they refer to and what associations, connotations and links the work create within the visitor.

The works are, regardless of size, rarely visually aggressive. They are based on and often produced as installations for a specific space.

Important sources of inspiration for my work are minimalism, conceptual art, architecture, psychology and philosophy as well as physical relationships to space and body, such as strolls, cleaning, or constructing.