Ak Ami

Art, Education, Liberating ourselves from oppression. The focus of my art has centered on signage and symbology from Iranian and Islamic art such as pattern and miniature painting. I am also influenced by symbology used in American pop culture in particular, symbols generated by American media. My exploration is in methods which construct a collective perspective. Although my work changes in form the connective thread in the content looks at the creation of symbols or icons through persuasion or other means. I am interested in what gives power to images and how they can represent philosophies or actions. In 1977 my family emigrated from Iran to America. At that time we did not predict that turmoil would keep us from returning to our homeland and family. This estrangement from my own culture and entrance into a culture with a history of hostility toward the previous creates, in my work an overlapped aesthetic through the visual culture of Iran and all of the cultures within Los Angeles. There is not a sense of belonging to either territory but a constant intermingling or float over all. In the pieces “Self Portrait Exaggerating Me as a Terrorist”, and “In Defense of Self defense III”, I use high school lesson plans to guide the drawings. The work uses text, written with a style drawn from Islamic calligraphy and patterning to reveal trends in education, that uphold questioned heroes. In “Self Portrait Exaggerating Me as a Terrorist”, there is a reference to Adrian Piper’s “Self Portrait Exaggerating my Negroid Features”. In a series of work entitled “Through Me the Prophet will Forever Speak”, Images of Western cultural icons are used to deconstruct the concept of “starpower” or idolatry. The face of each idol on a post card is painted over with an eastern image in classic miniature style. The work has a general reference to the Prophet’s return to Mecca. When establishing Islam in it’s formation, relics of Idolatry were either destroyed or defaced. “Stop it at it’s Source” was inspired in part by an Islamic shrine that my family maintains in Sari. It is also inspired by a political atmosphere in western society, driven by misconceptions of Islam. A central sculpture, reminiscent of a chandelier is entirely constructed of clear plastic knives. The walls are the color of damp earth and surrounded by text translated from Arabic to Farsi, then transliterated to English and written in a font to resemble Kufic. My most recent series “Re-Aiming the Canon”, images are pulled out and painted in gouache from photographs of people’s struggles. Since the iconic imagery is pulled out of it’s background, the placement can be anywhere in the world. All symbols are things that represent something else. I focus on those created by a collective understanding either locally, influenced by culture and context or understood globally based on human experience. My work is influenced by art production that isolates and discusses those symbols, ranging from minimalism to communication art. More than anything, my body of work exploits the signifiers relayed through iconic symbols. It looks at how icons can be complemented through their various linguistic messages and how they can be manipulated to change historical circumstances.