Mari Amman
Perception. Nature. Consciousness.
Mari Amman constructs images across photography, video and installation that explore perception as a meeting point between nature, consciousness and lived experience.
Mari Amman’s practice spans many media to allow for the, constructing of visual systems that explore how reality is perceived, formed and transformed. Her work moves between the microscopic and the monumental, from intimate bodily references to expansive natural and architectural environments.
Rather than representing the world directly, Amman builds images that operate as fields of interaction, where light, material and perception intersect. Liquid surfaces, geological textures and refracted environments recur throughout her work, creating shifting visual conditions that resist fixed interpretation.
The body appears within this system not as a stable subject, but as one element among many: fragmented, embedded or dissolved into wider structures of matter and energy. In this way, her work connects personal experience with broader questions of nature, cognition and the forces that shape both.
Amman’s practice is informed by research across disciplines, including science, architecture and philosophy, yet remains grounded in visual experience. Her works invite sustained looking, where meaning emerges gradually through attention, rather than being immediately defined.
Across formats, from large-scale public screens to immersive installations,she creates situations in which the viewer becomes aware of perception itself: how images are formed, how they shift, and how they shape our understanding of reality.
Mari Amman (b. 1984)
Selected Exhibitions & Projects
Recent presentations include More Than Human at Arte Expuesto, Monterrey (MX), alongside exhibitions and screenings across Europe and the United States, including Oslo, London, Los Angeles and Paris. Her work spans photography, video installation and large-scale public interventions.
Collections & Installations
Works have been presented in public and institutional contexts including Arte Expuesto Foundation (MX), Art Farm Iowa (US), and Videoart Archive / National Museum, Oslo (NO), with ongoing large-scale installation projects in development.
Awards & Residencies
Recipient of the First Prize, Imagining New Eurasia (Asia Culture Center, Gwangju), with residencies including Paris Poetry Residency, Redwoods Residency (US), and multiple Norwegian and international programmes.
Education
MFA (Honours), Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles
BA, Illinois Institute of Art
Mari Amman (b. 1984) is an artist examining epistemology to reflect on the influence of the imaginary realm on reality.
Following her first public exhibition in 1999 of land art, she pursued interests in Geological Empathy and Sublime Rheology. Her research-based approach to creating images, installations, video performances, poetry, paintings, sculptures, textiles and design foster understandings of transcendent experiences (the sublime). Amman collaborates with scientists, music, architecture, and culture professionals to question and convey effects of idealistic concepts on physical structures including biology, geology, resource usage, and built environment. Her works often position human cognition in an endless learning relationship, with that which cannot be named yet is often described as Nature, or a non-ideaological force.
A selection of international awards, residencies, and screenings: Omniscient, monolithic image and text, 1st by the jury in the Imaging New Eurasia exhibition at the Asia Culture Center, in Gwangju (SK, 2015). PraksisOslo Residency and Praxis Dansfestivalen at KHiO/Dansenhus (NO, 2017), Butoh Residency with Mushimaru Fujieda at KHiO (NO, 2018), Angelot-Trélex Residency (CH, 2019), UKS Young Artists' Society Residency (NO, 2019), Atelier Nord Residency (NO, 2024, 2019), Afjordance screening, AWMAS (UCSB, 2020), Kjerringøy Land Art Residency (NO, 2020), Stefan Simchowitz (US, 2020) collecting her work, Paris Poetry Residency with Trélex Residencies (FR, 2023), Bonny Doon Residency (US, 2022), foundational support and exhibitions for Art Farm Iowa (US, 2023), and Arte Expuesto (MX, 2023). She holds a Master of Fine Art (Honors) with Frankfurt School Theory/Conceptual Studio Practice from Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, California (2015), and Bachelor of Fine Art (Dean's List) in Advertising/Interior Architecture from Illinois Institute of Art (2006), with studies in Photography and History of Photography at College of Lake County in Grayslake, Illinois, and Social Psychology at Ehime University in Matsuyama, Japan (2012), Norwegian language (2014-2016), Italian language and culture (2025 - ongoing), with ~12 years of classical piano studies, and classical voice and dance training since childhood. Amman is a member of Leica Society International, Pneuma Art Foundation, BONO, Norske Billkedkunstnere, Magazzini Fotografici.
Her video art is held in Videokunstarkivet at the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo, photography prints represented by Daidda Gallery in Oslo, and Albumen Gallery in London. Amman is registered as an EIT Culture & Creativity Expert Evaluator with the EU Institute of Innovation and Technology.
Amman's artistic research in Aesthetic Resonances, Phlegrian Fields, Landcape-Memory-Eros developed from Pattern Recognition, Visual Literacy, and Body Architecture methods.
Her interest in understanding through arts arose from being raised near the Agonic line, surrounded by forest, prairie, a nuclear power plant, industrial agriculture, auto-ethnography with paternal heritage to political activist Ellen Ammann, landscape artist Harriet Sundström, and maternal Umbrian-Italian heritage. Amman's foundational training in music and dance underscores her artistic research involving geology, resonances, orology, dream study, social psychology, philosophy, temporality, memory, somatics and parietal perception. Her commitment to bringing harmony into reflective and strangely beautiful cultural work aims to uncover discernments and recenter hearts during geopolitical and technological transitions.
Enquire for more information or to request available works