An Interview with Aryana Minai
Aryana Minai is in the business of construction. Using repeated, sometimes decorative motifs, the work constructs familiar boundaries that speak to the language of the impenetrable brick wall but are wholly undermined by the porous, impressionable paper pulp Aryana uses as building material. Rather than expanding from printmaking outward, it is Aryana’s expanding painting practice has come to integrate really inventive print processes. Enjoy our conversation below.
The Dirt that Binds Me, 2020. Steve Turner LA
When did you first start printing or using printmaking techniques in your work? Do you remember what prompted your interest?
I suppose I've always had an interest in process-based techniques, but bridging painting and printmaking started with my interest in architectural rubbings. It was just an exercise to transfer a relief or pattern onto something else at first. A quick and immediate way to record something and see details you usually wouldn't notice. It created this connection to a place that held layers of history and memory.
When I first started painting, I made my own stencils by tape and then slathered paint within the lines to replicate reliefs of patterns on buildings. I then began making rubbings of those paintings, making these repetitive layers where I was simultaneously excavating and burying the geometric forms. That led me to my interest in embossing using the press. I always liked working with copper plate etchings, but I was really interested in what was happening on the backs of my prints afterward. I know that sounds general because it's a delightful moment to probably everyone who makes a print and notices that, but what I get stuck on is that the paper as a material shifted itself to embrace another material with the pressure of the press, a force. I thought the way these two things joined each other, turning something flat into an object, was beautiful. I'm currently making dyed handmade paper out of recycled materials and then embossing it with bricks. The way the pulp dries around the brick is one of those exciting moments for me.
The Dirt That Binds Me, 2020. Installation view, Steve Turner LA
Where do you typically make your work? Home studio? Shared space?
The work always gets completed in the studio, but I would say, starts with my everyday experiences. All of my weird experiments with printmaking happen outside of the print shop and my studio. But I do find clarity and comfort in a private studio space. I make an extreme effort to create a space that feels a part of me. It's so important to connect with the space you work in.
After returning from grad school at Yale, before anything else, I got a studio space. I was lucky enough to find one through a friend since I had to work on a show that opened in September. I was extra fortunate to have the opportunity to work at The Print Shop LA, which happened to be a couple of blocks down from my studio for the first two weeks.
The Dirt That Binds Me, 2020. Installation view, Steve Turner LA
Echo IV, 2020. Handmade paper and ink embossed with bricks, 13x17 inches.
Meet me in the middle, 2019. Acrylic and paper on canvas.
How do you see your print background informing your more expanded practice?
Actually, I feel that my painting background informs the way I incorporate printmaking into the work. I've always been interested in connecting traditional modes of making and histories to contemporary approaches. I was introduced to art that way. I grew up in Iran, where you walk by craft makers working traditional Iranian craft quite commonly, whether it's Persian miniature, pottery, calligraphy, or khatam-Kari, the inlaying technique of geometric patterns made of bone and wood. I think it's also the repetitive process of these art forms connected to printmaking, like tile or brick making. As I was describing earlier, the material change when embraced with another started with printmaking; it helped me bond and translate my physical experience of existing in two cultures related to architecture materially. Through these repetitive motions, I question: what gets lost, what gets replaced, and what stays?
Who would you love to collaborate with?
At first, I tried to think of an artist who has passed, is inaccessible, or something, but quickly realized it's with my peers. I worked closely with some of my cohort at school and hope I get to collaborate with in the future. Kathia St. Hilaire makes wonderful oil-based relief paintings that speak to me in the repetitive, almost excessive process. Chiffon Thomas uses embossed paper as structures to build and combine these light, fragile yet heavy-duty materials together. And Daniel Schubert who mainly works outdoors with cyanotypes utilizing the land and landscape as his teacher. I look up to these artists for the way they've expanded their use of printmaking.
Paths II, 2020. Dimensions variable Bricks, ink.
Wet walls, 2019. Acrylic, ink, paper on canvas.
What are you working on at the moment?
My work ranges in materials, but I am currently engaged in an ongoing paper making project. It started as a way to cope with awareness of the spaces I was inhabiting. I yearned for material with a past life, capable of a new cycle. As the pulp is wet, I bind them with my fingers by pushing down to form larger pieces, leaving behind my fingers' trace. I then use bricks and other objects as tools to emboss the pulp as it dries, creating a print with the memory of the tool and its absence. The embossment leaves behind a trace, perhaps embodying how our bodies and architecture absorb our existence leaving behind permanent impressions or scars. Both materials, paper, and bricks are earth broken down and put back together to form something else. I enjoy feeling these changes right under my hands or with my whole body.
I like materials with which I can build, or rather, rebuild. I almost feel the same way, having to shape-shift and exist in these two worlds. Some religious scriptures say we are made from soil and shall return to the earth. I like the idea of being described as a molded material. I've been thinking about the concept of home and architecture as a symbolic system. Is it the four walls that make the home or the people inside it because we carry so much cultural memory? What would it look like if these walls represented our bodies, my parents' bodies, and the labor they put their bodies through by migrating across the world. So I'm working on those ideas right now and hoping to implement other similar processes into that.
The Dirt that Binds Me, 2020. Steve Turner LA
Each feature post in the Womxn in Expanded Print series is accompanied by a donation to the social justice cause of each artist’s choosing in their name. Aryana’s chosen organization is the Women’s Prison Association.