Aviva Rahmani
ABOG Fellow for Contemplative Practice
2017 Fellow
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As the ABOG Fellow for Contemplative Practice, Aviva Rahmani will create Blued Trees Symphony in prospective US pipeline locations in collaboration with scientists, and copyright, environmental policy, and real estate lawyers. Utilizing site-specific painting to create “tree-notes” on private land facing condemnation for eminent domain, Rahmani will create copyright-protected sonified biogeographic sculptural compositions to halt proposed pipeline expansion.
Aviva Rahmani is the inaugural ABOG Fellow for Contemplative Practice, in partnership with the Hemera Foundation. This targeted fellowship supports artists who work with the intersection of social practice and contemplative practice.
Artist Bio
Ecological artist Aviva Rahmani’s PhD, “Trigger Point Theory as Aesthetic Activism,” was awarded from Plymouth University, UK in 2015. Research for her PhD contributed to The Blued Trees Symphony (2015 – present), an international project that has been installed and copyrighted in the path of natural gas pipelines across many miles of the American continent at multiple sites. It is an aspect of Gulf to Gulf (2009- present), a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) sponsored project exploring how art might affect climate change policies. The Blued Trees Symphony was awarded a NYFA Fellowship in 2016, as well as a grant from the Ethelwyn Doolittle Justice and Outreach Fund of the Community Church of New York, Unitarian Universalist.
Aviva Rahmani began her career as a performance artist, founding and directing the American Ritual Theatre (1968-1971), which performed throughout California. Her work has been exhibited and published internationally and she has produced over thirty, one-hour long raw Gulf to Gulf sessions which have been viewed on line by over eighty-five countries. “Trigger Points/ Tipping Points,” a precursor to Gulf to Gulf, premiered at the 2007 Venice Biennale. In 2009, Rahmani began presenting performance workshops on her theoretical approach to environmental restoration. The first event at the Survival Academy in Copenhagen, Denmark, was part of her participation as a formal observer for the University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB) at the United Nations IPCC conference on climate change.
Rahmani received an Arts and Healing Network award in 2009 for her work on water. In graduate school, she was teaching assistant to Allan Kaprow and Morton Sobotnick. She is currently an Affiliate at the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR), University of Colorado Boulder. Previous ecological art projects have resulted in the restoration of a former dump site to a flourishing wetlands system, Ghost Nets, 1990-2000 (www.ghostnets.com), and helped catalyze a USDA expenditure of $500,000 to restore 26 acres of critical wetlands habitat (the Blue Rocks project) in the Gulf of Maine. In 1999 and 2000 Rahmani was a recipient of the Nancy H. Gray Foundation for Art in the Environment grant for her work on the Ghost Nets project. In 2015 she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Ecology Residency with the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) to work on the Newtown Creek superfund site.
Artist portrait by Joe Gaffney, 2016.
Photographic documentation of trees painted with a casein of buttermilk and ultramarine blue pigment to grow moss. Detail shot from a grouping of 160 trees painted over a 1/3 mile “measure” of a conceptually based symphonic event which extended over 18 months, at 12 sites, across several miles, primarily in the United States. This location is Brush Mountain, Virginia, location of proposed New Market pipeline. Photo: Sarah Miller, 2016
Detail from the Blued Trees Symphony Overture on the Summer Solstice of 2015 in Peekskill, New York, location of the proposed Algonquin pipeline expansion. Trees are painted in a slurry of buttermilk and ultramarine blue pigment. Photo: Aviva Rahmani, 2015
Photograph of tree painted with a casein paint slurry of buttermilk and ultramarine blue pigment on Brush Mountain in Blacksburg, Virginia, location of the proposed New Market pipeline. Photo: Robin Boucher, 2016
Work-in-progress to re-define “public good” in Rensselaer County, New York, location of Kinder Morgan’s Northeast Direct Project, a proposed pipeline expansion that would obliterate thousands of trees in PA, NY, MA, NH, and CT. Trees being painted with a casein of buttermilk and ultramarine blue pigment to grow moss. Photo: Jack Baran, 2015
Detail #2 from a grouping of 160 trees painted across a 1/3 mile “measure” of a conceptually based symphonic event, which extended over 18 months, at 12 sites, across several miles, primarily in the United States. This location was on Brush Mountain, Virginia, location of proposed New Market pipeline. Photo: Sarah Miller, 2016
Detail #3 from a grouping of 160 trees painted across a 1/3 mile “measure” of a conceptually based symphonic event, which extended over 18 months, at 12 sites, across several miles, primarily in the United States. This location was on Brush Mountain, Virginia, location of proposed New Market pipeline. Photo: Sarah Miller, 2016
Detail of an installation for the Carbon Art Project curated by Yu Hyun-Ju at the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) Art Gallery, Daejeon, South Korea. Photo by Aviva Rahmani. 10’x15’ Photomontage with suspended, ultramarine blue painted quince branches illustrating sea level rise when all Arctic and Antarctic ice melts, and some remaining refugia for terrestrial life. Photo: Aviva Rahmani, 2017
Branches painted with a casein of buttermilk and ultramarine blue pigment with 10- 60” x 36” hanging translucent panels printed with text excerpted from writings by the artist and hung from gallery ceiling. Text pictured: “What’s really important to pay attention to… over owners’ rights and rights in general because it comes down… what we value.” Photo: Sarah Miller, 2016
Branches painted with a casein of buttermilk and ultramarine blue pigment with 10- 60” x 36” hanging translucent panels printed with text excerpted from writings by the artist and hung from gallery ceiling. This installation, at the Perspective Gallery of Virginia Tech, was the setting of a performed recitation of the legal premises as a chorale. Photo: Sarah Miller, 2016
String Quartet Coda performance with the Blued Trees Symphony installation in Perspective Gallery, Virginia Tech. Photo: Robin Boucher, 2016