Ario Elami

A Hudson-based artist, graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts’ graduate program through Tufts University, and a composer and author besides. I claim dual citizenship as both an Iranian and North American, and have spent my life growing among the east coast and midwest.

My latest art mainly explores architecture as visceral and botanical analogy; and the tension between human design and nature on the verge of reclaiming its birthright. This work 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 the inner to become externalized.

As a consequence, my work can be read meta-textually: it depicts sacrificial sites, and is itself an act of sacrifice, driven by mysterious aesthetic passions. Our modern materialist paradigm, historically a tool of empire, and justified according to the dictates of science’s high priests, has effectively closed us off from interactions with the transcendent. I see architecture, revitalized with its primitive and mythopoeic qualities, as a portal back into that domain. How do we participate in the creative act of the cosmos? which mythologies excite us? and how do we distinguish the inorganic from the organic? I like to think of my art as paralleling the act of turning over a rotting log and finding beneath it an occulted tangle of life. These places where things seem to emerge, and where life intermingles with the fecund properties of death — where one finds a simultaneity of the erotic, excretory, and orificial — these are the sites which interest me most.

I’m also drawn to architecture for the possibilities it offers for formal games, and the visual obsessions it can give rise to. In some of my latest artwork, I've focused on structures of the exquisite corpse variety and notions of the grotesque. These pieces are rendered more playfully and graphically, emphasizing the sensual aspects: ribs, bulges, holes, hair. As these pieces have multiplied, they've started to form their own imaginary world, linking them to the capriccios of artists such as Piranesi, Gonzaga, and Boullée.

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the Angelic

Orders? And even if one were to suddenly

take me to its heart, I would vanish into its

stronger existence. For beauty is nothing but

the beginning of terror, that we are still able to bear,

and we revere it so, because it calmly disdains

to destroy us. Every Angel is terror.

— Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

My writing has been published on sites and in digital publications such as No Escape Magazine (1), DEEP HELL (1) Kotaku (1) Heterotopias (1), Kill Screen (1, 2), Unwinnable (1, 2), Game Music Online (1, 2, 3), and Boston Hassle (1, 2). My first album, Vurgon, was released on the Ubiktune label in 2013, and my second, MAGNO, was released in 2021. In recent years, I’ve done contractual work as a concept artist for several projects.


GROUP EXHIBITIONS

  • Drawn to Detail || Spencertown Academy, Spencertown NY; 2024

  • Other Places|| Bill Arning Exhibitions, Kinderhook NY; 2024

  • Homes, Hamlets & Villages: Style and Lifestyle in Small Towns and Rural Communities || Spencertown Academy, Spencertown NY; 2023

  • MICE 2022 || Fuller Building, Boston MA; 2022

  • Storylines || Gallery 263, Cambridge MA; 2021

  • MICE 2020 || Lesley University Hall, Cambridge MA; 2020

  • Untitled exhibit || CultureHouse, Boston MA; 2020

  • SMFA & BPS 2016 Zine Exhibition || SMFA, Boston MA; 2016

  • Art of the Book || Dana Art Gallery, Wellesley, MA; 2014

  • Baker’s Dozen || Gallery Ehva, Provincetown MA; 2013

  • Thesis exhibition || Aidekman Arts Center, Medford, MA; 2013

  • WIT || Mission Hill Gallery, Boston MA; 2012

  • Proof of Purchase || Samsøn Projects, Boston MA; 2012

  • Print & Paper || SMFA, Boston MA; 2012

  • The Art of the Book || William Morris Hunt Memorial Library, Boston MA; 2012

  • Drawing Area Show || SMFA, Boston MA; 2012

  • Prints & Drawings || Works on Paper Lubeznik Center for the Arts, Michigan City IN; 2009

  • Grafted || DePree Art Center and Gallery, Holland MI; 2009

  • NYCAMS Student Show || Fall 2008 NYCAMS Gallery, NYC, NY; 2008

  • Annual Juried Student Show || DePree Art Center and Gallery, Holland MI; 2007


PUBLICATIONS

  • The Soul of Place: My Favorite Dark Souls Sites || No Escape (2022)

  • Ruins of Memory || Deep Hell (2020)

  • Souls Games are Great, Except for the Messages from Some Players || Kotaku (2018)

  • Secret Geometries || Heterotopias, Issue 2 (2017)

  • My Inner Scales || Unwinnable (2016)

  • Where Did the Fun Street Fighter Music Go? || Kill Screen (2016)

  • A Conversation on Boston's "Heroic" Architecture || Boston Hassle (2016)

  • How Dark Souls' Concept Art Might Have Deep Ties to Its Environmental Design || Gamasutra (2016)

  • Understanding the Sublime Architecture of Bloodborne || Kill Screen (2015)

  • Masashi Hamauzu Piano Works δ・ε・T_Comp 1 || Video Game Music Online (2014)