I make artwork that uses conversation as a medium and as a subjective research method. My work explores experiences of interdependence and disconnection, questions my own idealistic beliefs, and investigates how people make culture and culture makes people.
My work often takes place in public space and struggles with questions about who we are to each other in our society and what it means to be in public, or to be part of a public. These projects are usually participatory, sometimes collaborative, and range in scale from intimate interpersonal situations to large group activities. They have been exhibited as both live events and as photographic, written, recorded, web-based, and handmade documentation.
I am deeply committed to art having a fundamental role in society beyond the professional confines of the discipline. I therefore aim to make work that can be discussed and circulated outside of the art world’s paths of distribution and dialogue, yet remain articulate and relevant within art discourse. For me the question, who is art for? continues to be inspiring and interesting, however often it is asked.
I see my art practice as embodied research and an experiential testing zone for cultural, political and philosophical possibilities. My work inherits the long history of attempts to merge art and life but acknowledges that it is in the acute and delicate distances art offers us from the everyday that we are able to notice and reconsider how we live.
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Ariana holds an MFA in Art & Social Practice from Portland State University. She has exhibited work and organized events at apexart and Smack Mellon in New York City, Betonsalon in Paris, France, Southern Exposure in San Francisco, CA, Artspace in New Haven, CT, The Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time Based Arts Festival, The Portland Art Museum, Gallery Homeland and Disjecta in Portland, OR, and in many public places.
Her work has been included in the NW Biennial at the Tacoma Art Museum, Disjecta’s Portland 2012 Biennial, The Open Engagement Conference and the Discourse and Discord Symposium at the Walker Art Center.
Contact: publicwondering (at) gmail.com
PUBLICWONDERING 