Chromatic Tissue: Essencia Sculpture

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 research based praxis. An EIT Culture & Creativity Expert Evaluator, Amman works with biology, technological and geological scientists, music, architecture, and culture professionals. 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. Her interest in socially and empirically determined forms of intelligence grew from being raised near the Agonic line. Being surrounded by forest, prairie preserves, a nuclear power plant, and industrial agriculture informed pursuits in music and dance, research in temporality, beauty, sound, philosophy, psychology and memory, somatics and parietal perception. Ancestry with political activist Ellen Ammann and landscape artist Harriet Sundström motivated her auto-ethnographic research after moving from USA to Norway, while her critical apprehensions in geopolitics and background in design and marketing build upon her social psychology studies and research.  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 photo history at College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois, and social psychology at Ehime University in Matsuyama, Japan (2012).