NOT ALL THE SHADES OF GLASS

Joana Dhiamandi, an Architect, Glass Artist, and lecturer of Architecture and Design, with a Ph.D. in Architecture and Urban Planning, speaks with TRAILBLAZING MAGAZINE Architecture & Design about her last glass-inspired exhibition welcoming people at the hall of the Ministry of Culture.

Coming from a family of artists, Dhiamandi inherited the tradition of stained glass and kiln making since her family had the furnace and the studio. “We apply some techniques of working with this material that is so ancient, beautiful, applicative, and functional in many moments of our daily lives,” Dhiamandi says.

She has found inspiration in authors such as Le Corbusier, Matisse, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gaudi, and surrealist artists, “who have used art and space to realize authentic and unexpected situations in the human experience. Still, I’m always amazed by the unrepeatable elegance and aesthetics that nature brings us every day so generously.”

What theme(s) have you chosen to reflect in this exhibition inspired by the Glass? Can you talk more in detail about its displays?

The exhibition is entitled ‘’’ Not all the shades of Glass,” with around 30 artworks made of Glass in various shapes and sizes that welcome visitors once they enter the hall of the Ministry of Culture. The circular series has the most appeal, while my concern during the working process was working with form, color, and objectivity: the Glass is a plate, a prism, an object, unique but an object. The individual glass plates are created to represent isolated moments in a complex creative continuum and to be enlarged through lighting and installation. During my experiments, I have worked with various forms and shapes to elicit the density of Glass as a material that changes the structure and absorbs color like sand takes in water. It was also essential to show off how beautiful and substantial the difference between materials is; as shown here, the metal stands that hold it up only emphasize the Glass’s fragility and brittleness, its ‘otherworldly’ presence in the space of spartan rigor of metal. Whereas in the abstract series, his primary concern is with form, the firmness of the material once being a liquid or amorphous form. This freezing process evolves free of formal limits, becoming pure abstraction. Here, pure transparency is meshed with stone and shows the opposite of materiality, rigidity,

sharpness, and symmetry. The abstract objects of strange beauty, such as stratified wings or lost swallows with frozen wings captured in mid-flight announcing the wrong season, come across as dysfunctional forms that retain a strong, recognizable symbolic power, mended with stone.

The colored and plain Glass is displayed beautifully against a backdrop of white. Were there any special considerations to working with Glass? Why did you choose this material? Do you work with materials other than Glass?

As an architect, I prefer to work with atmosphere and sensations since they are an integral part of malgames; this makes the human experience more than physical but spiritual. By working with

Glass in space, I feel I can realize authentic situations for the human experience. I have always thought of the elegance of Glass as a means to create spatial objects of a function and a sustainable aesthetic nature, but also to bring architectural things that strongly meet the vital needs of man.

Do you have any favorite ensembles from the exhibition, and why?

It isn’t easy to distinguish a favorite part since, for every creator, its pieces are equal while one shows a different part of him. In this exhibition, my works are divided into several mini-series, with two important emerging lines: circular plates and abstract sculptural formats. The cycle of plates has a more emotional, dreamlike

state, while the colors transmit that emotional and spiritual fluctuation of me during the creating process. On the other hand, the different sections start with theecycleng of glass bottles; the work is called “Glass Bones,” where they are recycled glass bottles melted down to give that corpse feeling, leading towards a more innovative and contemporary wave, where the recycling process changes its function, shape, and at the end the phenomenology of its identity.

What messages do you want to convey with this exhibition?

The purpose of the exhibition was to create a sense of wonder, allowing the visitor to read some of the possibilities of both the repertoire of the materiality of Glass and its metamorphic range. Some miniseries are lined with a sensibility towards abstraction; others showcase recycling while simultaneously seeing Glass’s more figurative and decorative use.

In the end is essential the understand all the numerous possibilities this material can offer, either done in the hands of the craftsman with liquid flames or the frozen process of overlapping pieces merged with different materials.

As an architect and an artist, what can you say about your career? What has been your biggest artistic influence?

Despite being an architect and academic, I have always had a passion for art since I grew up in a family of artists. My father is a glass artist and craftsman, and I inherited the tradition of stained glass and kiln making since we have the furnace and the studio. We apply some techniques of

working with this material that is so ancient, beautiful, applicative, and functional in many moments of our daily lives. From architecture, I am mainly inspired by the principles of modernity. I have found inspiration in authors such as Le Corbusier, Matisse, Frank Lloyd Wright, Gaudi, and surrealist artists, who have used art and space to realize authentic and unexpected situations in the human experience. Still,

I’m always amazed by the unrepeatable elegance and aesthetics that nature brings us every day so generously.

How can you assess your experience as an advisor at the Ministry of Culture as LEAD Fellow 2022? How is this enriching your career?

There has been a misconception that art cannot be the right background for

leadership. Lately, this has been a change. Art and leadership have historical origins in interacting in the past and today. Both disciplines involve creativity for survival and evolution. While art is a way of experiencing and interpreting life experiences, on the other hand, leadership is an integral part of organizational life and management. The case of the LEAD Fellow program made it possible to bridge this aspect of my professional life. Coming from academia, I know the value of inspiration for the new generation with a passion for our professions; as an artist, I can appreciate the need to search for beauty, while in this leadership program next to the Ministry of Culture, I seek models to provide solutions for complex situations. All three elements engage inspiration, people, emotions, and the complexity of systems, while during this program, it is urged to learn, merging all of them for the public need.