Discussing Vast Realities with Ahavani Mullen
Ahavani Mullen lives and creates in Chicago, IL. Her multi-media works explore places that can’t be easily accessed. Even though we can see them, for most of us space and sky can feel more like abstract concepts rather than concrete realities. In her recent solo show, titled From Sky to Sky, Ahavani invites the ether above to a more grounded context and prompts the viewer to intimately inquire how we are individually and collectively connected to these faraway forces.
Can you share something about your background, and your personal history with art?
As global citizens, I feel so many of us wish to contribute something positive to our world, in various spheres of life. Having studied and engaged in art and spirituality for nearly 25 years, I feel strongly that my offering lies in creating visual art from this vantage point. By allowing my contemplative practice to inform my studio practice, and vice versa, I can explore the depths of each in a satisfying way, and create a kind of bridge between our earth and the higher worlds.
I have come to realize that the most meaningful way I can contribute to our world is in what I can embody and reveal on a level of consciousness, and lies within the process of making my work. It is a moment to moment practice in the studio, a kind of presence, as if I am cultivating soil. I have a need to make work that comes from a perspective that's elevating, transcends our earthly awareness, and aspires to embody something lofty.
Your recent solo exhibition is titled ‘From Sky to Sky’. How is the title reflected in this body of work?
This current work reflects on the ether, and the sky as an expanse of ever- transcendent infinity. It can also be imagined to contain a kind of common breath. As a place that belongs to all living beings, breathing individually as well as collectively. A kind of homeland in the sky, equalizing us.
I feel a great sense of urgency in this moment of multiple global crises, to embody this kind of vastness on a new level. There can be so many limitations in this earthly world. I like to imagine that vastness is a reality that can be chosen in every circumstance, how by changing my perspective and embracing a more expansive view, the real reality of a situation can often become clearer.
How would you describe your work, and the ways your paintings and sculptures inform one another?
My paintings appear to be in constant motion through layered transparency, color gradation and repeated forms, employing a variety of media including oil, acrylic, charcoal and watercolor. Lyrical lines dance beyond a framework constructed of refracted light and shadow. Hovering between shifting planes, they describe multiple realms, dimension, and volume or vacuum.
My sculptures collaborate with and amplify the physical flatness of the paintings, playfully posing questions about the work’s own imagined origin and history, material composition and density. These works are solid structures covered in canvas, composed of a variety of media such as silver leaf, limestone, charcoal, encaustic paint, aluminum, or copper. Alternating between seemingly weightless and impossibly dense, some works echo invisible forces of nature, while others reference geologic strata or relics from ancient civilizations on earth or beyond.
What’s next for you? Anything coming up that you can share with us?
I have a couple residencies coming up that I am very excited about. I have an invitation from the Hypatia Trust to work at Hypatia-in-the-Woods, a solo residency for women-identified artists near Olympic National Forest, WA, in 2021. I was also awarded a residency at Tusen Takk in 2022.
