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Ario Elami

Architectural fantasies

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art by somerville artistArioElami titledBound Moss-Hummock
Bound Moss-Hummock Colored pencil on paper 11.5" x 7.5"
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Artist's Statement

A Boston-based Iranian-American artist, and graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts’ graduate program through Tufts University. I am a composer and author besides.

My latest artwork mainly explores architecture as visceral and botanical analogy, and the tension between human design emerging from the ground of being versus nature being on the verge of reclaiming its birthright. It has developed in tandem with an understanding of the earliest architecture as numinous altars, upon which were laid sacrificial items such as teeth, eggs, skulls, and vertebrae; and a perception of nature as a roiling mass of aggressive life, perpetuating itself through overabundance.

In this sense, architecture manifested out of spiritual violence, and was a site for what is inner to become externalized. My work can thus be read meta-textually: it depicts sites of sacrifice, and is itself an act of sacrifice, driven by mysterious passions. Through contexts such as these, one can review the body itself as a bound up architecture -- erotic, excretory, and orificial --, with all of our concomitant desires and fears placed upon it. Outside of this, I’m drawn to architecture for the possibilities it offers for formal games, and the particular visual obsessions it can give rise to.

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