Cheryl Maeder was born and raised in Elmwood Park, New Jersey. In her early 20’s she moved to Zurich, Switzerland, where she studied photography at Zurich University of the Arts. After 8 years in Switzerland, she returned to the United States and opened her studio in San Francisco where she photographed international advertising & fashion campaigns for clients such as Sony, AT&T, Visa, Calvin Klein, Marriott Hotels among others.
She transitioned from photographing fashion models to photographing real women. She wanted to celebrate the beauty of women in all shapes and sizes. Her photography work became the inspiration for the global Dove Campaign on ‘Real Women, Real Beauty’, which was shown in the United States and throughout the world, transforming the way women are perceived in the media.
“The artist has made a career out of creating work that is the opposite of what others are doing – shooting out of focus and fuzzy when the trend is hyper definition, aiming her lens at plus size women when the trend is super skinny; and projecting video installations when the theme is murals. But she makes it all work and makes her work stand out by doing so,” said arts writer Sandra Schulman about Cheryl Maeder and her work.
Cheryl Maeder is known for her interactive installations, combining photography, video and film. Her photographs are in the permanent museum collection of The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum in Miami, exhibited internationally at The Musée du Louvre in Paris, and at SFMOMA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Cooper Union in New York, Norton Museum of Art in Palm Beach and Cornell Art Museum in Delray Beach. Her work is exhibited at major art fairs, such as Art Miami, SCOPE Art Show, Art London and Art Shanghai, among others. Her work is also auctioned at Sotheby's, NY. She had a solo exhibition at Miami International Airport in 2015, and was recently selected by PBS for Project Filmmaker, South Florida, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.
This renowned artist and filmmaker exhibited at SCOPE Art Show in Miami Beach December 4-9, 2018 with Galerie Vivendi/Paris during Art Basel Week. She was recently selected to be a guest speaker at the CODAworx CODAsummit at the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico from September 20-21, 2018. The event was a groundbreaking, 1.5-day long conference focused on the intersection of art, technology and place, with exceptional keynote speakers and panels of experts in the field. Maeder was selected to speak during the segment "Making Waves: New Technologies" about her Public Art Video Installation Submerge for the City of West Palm Beach/Canvas Outdoor Museum.
Cheryl Maeder's current exhibitions include The Miami New Media Festival (MNMF), an Arts & Technology Festival focused on Water, Heritage and Climate Change. She was selected as a Guest Artist for The Miami New Media Festival, which takes place in seven cities from October 2, 2018 through January 15, 2019, with the intention of exploring different perspectives of the relationship between water, cultural heritage, and climate change, through arts and tech. Miami New Media Festival exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome. The festival kicked-off in Aruba on October 2nd, and opened in Miami on October 9th - showcasing exciting and leading-edge creative artworks of 70 artists from around the world in Miami, Aruba, Bogotá, Caracas, Rome, Santo Domingo, and Valencia. Miami will host a string of events, workshops, exhibitions and programs now through January 15th, 2019. Organized by Arts Connection Foundation and ConcreteSpace. For more information about this artist, for sales, commissions or general inquiries, contact: maeder@maederphotography.com / https://maederphotography.com/