Angela Freiberger

Angela Freiberger began to make marble objects in the early 1990s. Using Carrara stone from Italy and pink marble from Portugal, she sculpts receptacles or recipients; replicas of utilitarian objects such as urinals, bathtubs, vessels, and large and small bowls. Freiberger utilizes her own body as a model from which to cast a variety of body parts, such as the back, stomach, the head, etc., thus transforming the sculptures into an extension of her body. Sometimes, the objects contain carved marks of the artist’s hands, fingers, or toes, as signatures of the artist imprinted on the stone. As Angela’s process of interaction with the pieces develops, she continues to emphasize more her relation with the sculptures and performances as extensions of her own physicality.

“My work explores the idea of ‘body’, in which the sculpture and other media suggest and become an extension of my body. The sculptures represent and contrast the finitude of the human body. I incorporate performance to challenge and transgress physical and mental boundaries. The use of video and my physical interaction with it are also an element that adds to the tension between the material and the immaterial.”

Angela Freiberger pieces are part of the Joao Sattamini collection on display at the Contemporary Museum of Art in Rio de Janeiro, as well as the Gilberto Chateaubriand collection at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro. She was included on 1997, in the VIth Havana Biennial with an installation consisting of plaster tombstones imbedded with photographs of relatives who perished in WWII. With a life where creating art becomes as natural as waking, Angela has prolifically produced over 30 live performances in cities ranging from Rio de Janeiro & Macapá in Brazil to New York City. Angela Freiberger work was featured in the Sculpture Magazine/April, 2005, Art Nexus, Arte el Dia and Art Slant in 2009 & on the cover of Veja Rio.

Angela re-performed with Marina Abramovic at MOMA at the show “The Artist is Present” from March to May 31, 2010 and received the Senior Fellow for the Terra Foundation for America Art Europe in Giverny, France on August, 2010.

Freiberger was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She received a Bachelor of Arts from the School of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1976. In 1986, she studied computer graphics at the University of California in Los Angeles. In the early 1990 she traveled to Italy and Portugal and made sculptures in marble. In 2007 she received the Master of Fine Arts at State University of New York at Stony Brook, New York.