Maike Freess (b. 1965, Leipzig) studied at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig (1980–85) and earned her diploma with distinction at the Kunsthochschule Burg Giebichenstein in Halle/Saale (1986–90) under Prof. Inge Götze, where she later continued as a master student. She went on to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1991–92), in the multimedia atelier of Christian Boltanski, and later held a teaching post at the École des Beaux-Arts in Le Mans (1997). She currently lives and works between Berlin and Paris.

Freess works across drawing, photography, video, sculpture, and installation, though drawing remains her primary field. Her central and recurring subject is the human figure—typically an anonymous head or full-body portrait rendered with striking hyperrealism, at times on a monumental scale (works on paper reaching up to three metres). Her art probes the workings of memory and the unconscious: the images we dream and recall, and the way subjective, self-protective memory reshapes the past. As she has put it, her core theme is “the
human being in its imperfect, limited, and unstable nature,” and its relationship to itself and its own psyche.

She frequently stages herself within her own work—appearing as photographic subject, video protagonist, and wax sculpture—shifting between roles and identities to explore self-reflection and inner monologue. Her installations are conceived so that all media interact within the space, drawing the viewer bodily into the work rather than allowing purely visual detachment.

Freess has exhibited widely across Europe, including solo shows at the Grassimuseum, Leipzig (1995), the Kulturhistorisches Museum Magdeburg (1995), Le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine (2001), and the Von der Heydt Kunsthalle, Wuppertal (2015–16), among others in Paris, Berlin, and beyond. Her work is held in public collections including the Von der Heydt-Museum (Wuppertal), the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain (Strasbourg), FRAC Île-de-France and FRAC Haute-Normandie, the Museum of New Art (Detroit), and the Museum of Contemporary Art Osaka.