Maja Fredin

Lately I have been thinking a lot about chickens, meat and muscles. Fabricated chickens whose muscle growth is optimized to the extend that their legs breaks under their weight. As the Broiler became the perfect metaphor for the industrializing and optimizing the self, I am forcing myself to look at the world through the lens of a bodybuilder. An investigation of the ego-centered times we live in, an era where the world is on fire, everything seems to be fake and plastic, but as a paradox authenticity and personal growth is rewarded. I am now totally absorbed in gym training and the building of my own flesh has become my art form. The marble statues of the ancient Greece are lingering in their perfection. A once colorful world, stands now cold and pale in its hollow perfection. I dream of revolution and a paradigm shift. But what do I do instead of raising hell? I go to the gym. Because easier to improve upon yourself than the world. When I lift the self becomes irrelevant, I am simply my body and my breathing. The flesh.

Mind to Muscle ”I am searching for a sacred place where the body can be nothing else but a pile of meat. The utopian idea of the body as a divine vessel fueled by blood and protein. But to separate a body from sex and lust is a hopeless task, just as impossible as turning shit into gold. A naive dream by a mad alchemist that turned me into a bodybuilder. I now find myself rebuilding my body into a massive piece of well defined filets, distanced from hyper sexuality. A Frankensteinian method of searching for perfection. Mind to Muscle” - Born 1992, in Uppsala, currently living in Stockholm. Maja builds her artistry on performative installations that allow the viewer to become part of her everyday choreography. Her works could bee seen as a reflection of society —the fetish for consumerism, dysmorphophobia, food, and her own decay. With a broad mix of humor and rancid kitsch, she twist and turn reality, expand her delusions, and invites you into her interpretation of the already impossible world that we live in. Because it is in the borderland between laughter and profound seriousness that Maja wants to place herself: ”I believe that this is where art can truly make a difference”. - Maja Fredin graduated her MFA from Konstfack CRAFT! 2022. She was the holder of Maria Bonnier Dahlin’s Stiftelse Scholarship 2023 and has exhibited at institutions and museums such as, Bonniers Konsthall, Uppsala Konstmuseum, Diö Konsthall, KiNMuseum för Samtidskonst, Landmark - Bergen Kunsthall. She is represented in the collection by Maria Bonnier Dahlin’s Stiftelse and KiNMuseum för Samtidskonst, and has been performing both both nationally and internationally.