LOVE : LOVE
2020
VALENTINE AMARI
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Love:Love (pronounced “Love All” from the tennis scoring system) is a creative, social, and spiritual dedication to love as an overarching cosmic force that is incomprehensible in the ways it manifests in our physical plane. Love can be found, extracted, interpreted, and manifested from the plentiful situations that constitute the human condition. Love is never the same twice, never replicable, always shifting and morphing into newer, more exciting positions. Love is a medium for connection, communication, community, collaboration, experience, labor, etc, and exists throughout countless mediums.
Documentation by Victoria Xu
Leung Family Gallery - Black Art’s Showcase 2022 -Multiplicity, not Monolith: Locating the Self Through Art
Small Format - ALL OF MY HEARTS
Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs - The Americas
Leung Family Gallery - Black Art’s Showcase 2019 - Community of Love
Small Format - ALL OF MY HEARTS
SoLA Contemporary - Like Water
Small Format - ALL OF MY HEARTS
Also Shown InLeung Family Gallery - Black Art’s Showcase 2019 - Community of Love
Granoff Center - 40th Annual Juried Art Exhibition
SoLA Contemporary - Like Water
Tiny Exhibit - Paper or Bioplastic
Leung Family Gallery - Black Art’s Showcase 2019 - Community of Love
North House Art Show - Paper or Bioplastic
Leung Family Gallery - Black Art’s Showcase 2022 -Multiplicity, not Monolith: Locating the Self Through Art
Small Format - ALL OF MY HEARTS
V. Amari
2018 -2020
Digital Media, Photography, Animation, Sculpture, Handmade Paper, Poetry, Bioplastic
Shield For My Lover (2018)
Papier Mâché, Plastic Roses & Assorted Flowers
In the creation of a hybrid object, this piece finds itself between a shield and a shell, as well as a tool and natural object. This enchanted item serves to armor its wielder, who in turn act as a shield for themselves and the ones they love. This is the first piece in my body of work.
Our Mother’s Fears (2018)
Digital Media, 14X10in
This is the first series I made independent of my curriculum, which is representative of my experience in perceiving the world for its corruption and evils. Lying deep within my spirituality rooted in Baptism, I imagined the mythos of an omniscient mother deity (by appropriating sculptures made by Francisco Romero Zafra) that surveys the state of the world she forged, and chooses to take action by performing a final act of love to rescue it.
Our Mother’s Envoy of Grief, Paying Her Respects to Our Doomed World
Our Mother’s Hope for Salvation, in Preparation for Our Last Funeral
Our Mother’s Ultimate Sacrifice, Stripping Us of Our Blessed Corona
Our Mother’s Tears of Creation, Flooding Out the Old World
Our Mother’s Divine Exhalation, Breathing Life Into the New World
CUPIDITY//MAMMON (2018)
Digital Media, 28x20in
cupidity - greed for money or possessions.
mammon - wealth regarded as an evil influence or false object of worship and devotion.
This series personifies late capitalist practices that have seeped into our quotidian lives, and those who benefit from our (seemingly) inescapable entrenchment within them. I have appropriated sculptures made by Francisco Romero Zafra and a painting by Thomas Cole in the aims of blending comedy, irony, and anguish through space and time.
Bank of King Cupid
Amora’s Dilemma
Damnation to the Binary
Mammon’s Legendary Machination
1% Eternal
Inner Core of Adonis (2019)
Digital Media, 20x20in
adonis - a very handsome young man.
This piece is based off of the hashtag #MCM, or Man Crush Monday, bringing form to the internal process of longing and desire of an idealized figure. Formed through an interest in shifting the focus of the materialities in my digital work, combined with my take that men are better left in fantasy. Drawing inspiration from traditional ideas of romance, introspection, and yearning, this piece is both satirical as well as extremely autobiographical.
Venom to Nix the Patriarch (2019)
Digital Media, 28x20in
nix - put an end to; cancel.
This piece is based off of a prompt that I received in my first RISD class: a picture of a woman crying accompanied by the text, “When your daughter wishes you didnt exist anymore.” My brain immediately went to a story of a venmous, spitting feminine serpent entity, locked in an eternal contention with the primordial father. Exploring juxtaposition and ideas of classicism, revolution, reclamation, and evolution, I wished to symbolize current struggles against archaic hegemonic systems that currently plague humanity.
2018 -2020
Digital Media, Photography, Animation, Sculpture, Handmade Paper, Poetry, Bioplastic
Shield For My Lover (2018)
Papier Mâché, Plastic Roses & Assorted Flowers
In the creation of a hybrid object, this piece finds itself between a shield and a shell, as well as a tool and natural object. This enchanted item serves to armor its wielder, who in turn act as a shield for themselves and the ones they love. This is the first piece in my body of work.
Our Mother’s Fears (2018)
Digital Media, 14X10in
This is the first series I made independent of my curriculum, which is representative of my experience in perceiving the world for its corruption and evils. Lying deep within my spirituality rooted in Baptism, I imagined the mythos of an omniscient mother deity (by appropriating sculptures made by Francisco Romero Zafra) that surveys the state of the world she forged, and chooses to take action by performing a final act of love to rescue it.
Our Mother’s Envoy of Grief, Paying Her Respects to Our Doomed World
Our Mother’s Hope for Salvation, in Preparation for Our Last Funeral
Our Mother’s Ultimate Sacrifice, Stripping Us of Our Blessed Corona
Our Mother’s Tears of Creation, Flooding Out the Old World
Our Mother’s Divine Exhalation, Breathing Life Into the New World
CUPIDITY//MAMMON (2018)
Digital Media, 28x20in
cupidity - greed for money or possessions.
mammon - wealth regarded as an evil influence or false object of worship and devotion.
This series personifies late capitalist practices that have seeped into our quotidian lives, and those who benefit from our (seemingly) inescapable entrenchment within them. I have appropriated sculptures made by Francisco Romero Zafra and a painting by Thomas Cole in the aims of blending comedy, irony, and anguish through space and time.
Bank of King Cupid
Amora’s Dilemma
Damnation to the Binary
Mammon’s Legendary Machination
1% Eternal
Inner Core of Adonis (2019)
Digital Media, 20x20in
adonis - a very handsome young man.
This piece is based off of the hashtag #MCM, or Man Crush Monday, bringing form to the internal process of longing and desire of an idealized figure. Formed through an interest in shifting the focus of the materialities in my digital work, combined with my take that men are better left in fantasy. Drawing inspiration from traditional ideas of romance, introspection, and yearning, this piece is both satirical as well as extremely autobiographical.
Venom to Nix the Patriarch (2019)
Digital Media, 28x20in
nix - put an end to; cancel.
This piece is based off of a prompt that I received in my first RISD class: a picture of a woman crying accompanied by the text, “When your daughter wishes you didnt exist anymore.” My brain immediately went to a story of a venmous, spitting feminine serpent entity, locked in an eternal contention with the primordial father. Exploring juxtaposition and ideas of classicism, revolution, reclamation, and evolution, I wished to symbolize current struggles against archaic hegemonic systems that currently plague humanity.
Paper or Bioplastic (2019)
Handmade Paper, Poetry, Bioplastic
Handmade Paper, Poetry, Bioplastic
Paper or Bioplastic includes explorations with bioplastic structures made from gelatin, water, and glycerin, mixed with various food dyes and glitters for aesthetic satisfaction, and essential oils for olfactory stimulation. It also includes various pulp paintings made on handmade paper, as well as “Saccharine” a mini anthology including poetry from M. Tonnette, on mullen paper with yucca embedded into the back, as well as cotton pulp making up the front page and seaweed pulp making the back page.
Pulpy Sea Dragon (2019)
Saccharine (2019)
“I Want To Fall In Love”
“Absolutely Necessary”
“A Restoration”
“Peace & Blessings”
©️M. Tonnette 1997-2012
Pulpy Sea Dragon (2019)
Saccharine (2019)
“I Want To Fall In Love”
“Absolutely Necessary”
“A Restoration”
“Peace & Blessings”
©️M. Tonnette 1997-2012