Ahavani Mullen
Ahavani Mullen is a visual artist who constructs paintings, sculptures and installations which have evolved from silence. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Tusen Takk Foundation, the Macedonia Institute, Vermont Studio Center and Hypatia Trust. Other honors include awards from James Rondeau, Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, and grants from 3Arts, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, the Illinois Arts Council Agency, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She has presented exhibitions in gallery and university settings such as Northwestern University, Hyde Park Art Center, CIRCA Gallery, Gallery 1871, Olivet Nazarene University, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Maryland, and at the Dennos Museum Center in Traverse City, MI in spring 2023. Her work is included in numerous private and public collections, and can be viewed at: https://www.ahavani.com
Festival, 30” x 30”
Celestial Poles No 3, 16” x 12”
Artist Statement
The objects I create have evolved from silence. They now exist as a relatively permanent record of moments, encapsulated in an earthly, tangible form.
My most recent body of work, From Sky to Sky, views the ether as an expanse of ever-transcendent infinity, while also imagining it as a collective breath, a kind of equalizing homeland connecting all living beings. Within this work, I reflect on the necessity and urgency of vastness in this moment.
My works offer passage to an intermediate space between the seen and unseen, en route to subtle, unknown destinations. Hovering between shifting planes, they describe multiple realms, dimension, and volume or vacuum.
My paintings appear to be in constant motion through layered transparency, color gradation and repeated forms, employing a variety of media including oil, acrylic, charcoal and watercolor. Lyrical lines dance beyond a framework constructed of refracted light and shadow.
My sculptures collaborate with and amplify the physical flatness of the paintings, playfully posing questions about the work’s own imagined origin and history, material composition and density. These works are solid structures covered in canvas, composed of a variety of media such as silver leaf, limestone, charcoal, encaustic paint, aluminum, or copper. Alternating between seemingly weightless and impossibly dense, some works echo invisible forces of nature, while others reference geologic strata or relics from ancient civilizations on earth or beyond.
At Tusen Takk
Rooted in a long-term contemplative journey, Ahavani’s work records relatively permanent moments in earthly time, offering passage to an intermediate space between the seen and unseen. Hovering between shifting planes, the works describe multiple realms, dimension, and volume or vacuum.
At Tusen Takk, Ahavani used energetically-charged paint to create fields of color, light, and texture that live as portals to other realms of consciousness. Employing sound vibration, the works were created by submerging the canvas in multiple pools of pigment and water, while an audio selection was directed into the water via a speaker, distilling it with a specific quality.
Examples of audio used include: mantras or music composed from ancient sacred texts such as the Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, or audio from natural settings with little exposure to human-created sound. For the artist, it was important that the audio connects to a universal, aspiring consciousness from the current moment or centuries past.
This body of work was shown in the exhibition Ahavani Mullen: Across Centuries and the Earth on view at the Dennos Museum Center in Traverse City, MI, February 22–May 18, 2023.
Ahavani Mullen in front of her exhibition Across Centuries and the Earth at the Dennos Museum, Traverse City, MI, Feb 22–May 18, 2023
Ahavani Mullen at Tusen Takk, with the work Lead Me from the unreal to the Real in-progress
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