DORSA AHARI

DORSA AHARI AHARI DORSA

When did you first become interested in art?

I’ve been interested in art since my early years of childhood. As my father is an architect and my mother constantly had a unique taste in interior design, I have always been exposed to unique shapes, designs, and colours. In some way, my father’s career path inspired me to either become an architect or be involved in some type of creative field, as I was always drawn to geometric shapes, clear cuts, and colours; it was the simpler formations that allowed me to give birth to extraordinary concepts and ideas. Art, in itself, was always embedded within me.

How did you get to where you are today in your practice?

I believe that it came from a deep curiosity, though in the beginning I struggled with structuring and transferring my ideas and thoughts into a goal-oriented creative process. Throughout time, I gradually became more in tune with my intuition and began trusting myself, the feelings and experiences I gained from mistakes and influential events in my life. I somehow used art as a way of expressing my feelings and understanding myself on a deeper level; the more I explored variations of techniques and mediums, the more I found myself beginning to create my own style.

What has been the most challenging aspect of your art career?

I would have to say my internal struggles as a young artist has been the most challenging of all; constantly questioning myself and my work to somehow reach for this state of perfectionism. Over time I finally grasped the wisdom of knowing that "perfection" is an illusion, and with that information, I shifted my mindset from “trying to be perfect” to “trying to better myself”. In this way, I also took away the regular loop of going down the misleading path of social media. I am glad that I have reached a point where I can distinguish the rush of social media from my own reality and accept that as an artist, I will always be questioning my work and challenge myself to go further which, is the beauty behind it all. I need to let things happen to me, accept them and channel them out by creating them in my own unique language and way.

Where do you find inspiration?

My art is my diary. Therefore, my inspiration comes from the events happening around and within me; anything that leaves an emotional trace on me. To be more precise, we (humans) are psychologically overly complicated creatures, full of knots, traumas, and tragedies. I am obsessed with digging deep within myself to find these knots and challenging myself to resolve them. It’s often a painful and intense process (emotionally). However, by doing so, you are entering the process of healing yourself which is beautiful as it results in freedom and love. This is what I call "The beauty behind the pain” and that in itself inspires me.

DORSA AHARI AHARI DORSA DORSA AHARI AHARI DORSA

Which artist do you look up to? Any artists you're loving at the moment?

To begin with, I’d have to say that some well-known artists that have inspired me along the way have always been the likes of Dalí, Gaudí, Wassily Kandisky and Peter Beard; you can really see fragments and themes of surrealism and geometry within my work. There are also many artists, today, that inspire me and that I absolutely love. I have been following the journey of artists such as Venetia Berry, Eloosh, Catarina TM Design, Stefan Gunnesch and Charlie Elms over the past few years and am absolutely inspired by their creativity.

What's one thing people should know about you?

For a decade, as an engineer, I explored the relationship between numbers, machines, and human behaviour; none of which fully satisfied my soul and mission. The more I dug into the field, the more I craved the human soul, psyche and connection –which is essentially what machines are missing. So, after a decade, I started to explore the other end of the spectrum where I felt more at home. For me, creating a collage is a way of communicating/transmitting my soul’s journey to the physical world, by using pieces that already exist; recycling and reusing unwanted pages and magazines. In a way, it is somewhat like engineering, yet in a soulful way.