Mari Amman
Mari Amman (b. 1984, Dixon, Illinois, USA) is an artist working with allegory through interests in the secular and sacred. Poetic beauty and insights in relationships between the subconscious, technology, and built environments synthesize in a multidisciplinary, research based praxis. Geological Empathy and Sublime Rheology are concepts underscoring critical considerations in the ethical and moral applications of the imaginary to influence the real. The relations between idealism and environments results in reflective works with images, installations, poetry, performance, painting, sculpture, video, textiles and design. An EIT Culture & Creativity Expert Evaluator, Amman works with biology, technological and geological scientists, music, architecture, and culture professionals.
Her interest in socially and empirically determined forms of intelligence grew from familial and formative influences being raised near the Agonic line, surrounded by forest, prairie preserves, a nuclear power plant, and industrial agriculture. Ancestry with political activist Ellen Ammann and landscape artist Harriet Sundström motivated auto-ethnographic research after moving from USA to Norway. Her critical apprehensions in geopolitics, background in music, dance, design, and marketing built upon her research in social psychology, philosophy, temporality, beauty, sound, memory, somatics and parietal perception relative to technocratic conflations of scientific methods and the realm of fantasy in science fiction. She is a foundational artist to Art Farm Iowa (US, 2023) and Arte Expuesto (MX, 2023). Afjordance screened during AWMAS (UCSB, 2020); Omniscient, monolithic image and text, was awarded 1st by the jury in the Imaging New Eurasia exhibition, in Gwangju (SK, 2015). She was poet and artist-in-residence in Paris (FR, 2023), Bonny Doon (US, 2022), Kjerringøy Land Art (NO, 2020) guiding forest bathing and presenting Sublime Timescapes. She developed trauma informed psychological research and practical methods at Angelot-Trélex (CH, 2019), PraksisOslo, Praxisdansfestivalen, and Butoh residency with Mushimaru Fujieda at KHiO (NO, 2017, 2018). She holds a Master of Fine Art (honors) with Frankfurt School Theory/Conceptual Studio Practice from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles (2015) and Bachelor of Fine Art (Dean's List) in Advertising/Interior Design from Illinois Institute of Art (2006), Photography and History of Photography at College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois, and Social Psychology at Ehime University in Matsuyama, Japan (2012).
Her forthcoming works are iterations of Trânsito, Suspended Planes at TEKS, Gong Teppe, Igloo. Landcape-Memory-Eros, Aesthetic Resonances, and Pozzolana based on pedagogical methods Amman developed in Pattern Recognition, Visual Literacy, and Body Architecture.
