Published on: 25 October 2026
Mari Amman on how to take playfulness seriously
‘The pain of being the other, or on the outside, gradually became a gift that revealed internal thresholds for navigating connection, delineating and appreciating difference and space.‘
– How did you figure out how to paint the way you do? Your work of creating pieces that look like photos is incredible, but what is the story behind this style?
I paint, and I also work with photography, installation, sculpture, performance, poetry, and artistic research. I think the artistic research approach keeps me questioning things playfully and openly, and that leads to conversations and experimenting. Instead of marrying myself to an identity or a medium, like I had in the past with photography, I opened up my practice, life and therefore my mind during graduate school in Los Angeles. After that, living and working in different countries continued to expose me to people, ways of doing and thinking, books and music that continue to engage my memories and habits in ways that continue to help me understand how to become better at my attempts to create art.
With the paintings and Chromatic Tissues, I used different materials and media depending on the meaning and curiosity driving the work… from gouache to acrylic, oil pastel, textile glue, paper, canvas, pigment from food, ground-up cobalt and egg yolk.
Often people will think An Apophatic Way of Knowing Water and Over a Streambed a Body Formed in the Light Refracted in Waves are paintings, but they are silk prints made from scanning analogue Kodak Gold film and printing the image with a technician and designer in Napoli, Italy.
Another series that people tend to think are paintings when printed is a project currently called Movimenti. I am continuing to research and experiment with ways of producing this work, including on textile, mosaic, metal and chains, as the significance of the ideas is so simple that everything sort of becomes associated and possible to realise.
I have made some experiments with painting and drawing on photographs, but have only had those privately collected and not yet exhibited.
This year, I completed paintings with salt water and ink on woven cotton for a project called Jakob’s Ladder, based on the perpetuity of life, a childhood game called Jacob’s Ladder, and witnessing the way sunsets over the Mediterranean Sea are mythologised – yet are truly a blessing to see from anywhere in the world.
In this way, I find discrete subjects that can be both universal and subjective at the same time meaningful to work with, and the use of the painting materials and surfaces to offer themselves opportunities for open and diverse meaning and associations. Several of the books I finally had the chance to finish this summer after several years have contributed to my thinking process, and I am happy to share those titles as well.
– While spending time traveling and learning different things, which of these experiences do you think has impacted your work in the most significant way?
Receiving support has been transformative. Knowing I always have my work provides comfort that can scarcely-if-ever-be bought. Adapting to living in Norway and then Napoli are sort of extremes of each other. The inner resilience Norway demanded became the key skill that helped me survive a year and a half in Napoli. In several other places I struggled with feeling like a tourist and trying to find a way to live as “normally” (for me) as possible in those spaces so I could keep some critical distance. In all these times, being sound and sense sensitive in general, there is a great deal of persistent aspects within the way I’m oriented internally that compounded the demand for a kind of faith – in the sense of applying or suspending mental activity. When the mental realm became too loud, I began to seek learning about materials or pursue finding out more truth in popular media subjects, as a means to expand the limits of the psychological framework of the cultures I was living in. Metaphorically, I’ve found the way sea water reforms the softness of tufo over time more similar to what learning different things has done to my work, instead of the way waves crashing against granite take a lot more to reform the coast. I’m less rigid in my attachments to mediums and even more easily affected. I feel more pressure and also more freedom. In this sense, the oft-perceived rigidities of discipline or weight of making work with as-close-to-everything-and-all-perspectives considered while doing so are softened and I feel more childlike with curiosity, wonder, and foolishly indecisive in life and decisive in choices in my work. In practice, instead of taking years plus months to make decisions, I can plan out and decide things faster and continue a vision if the environment presents distractions. I often tried to go back to familiar places and found they were no longer there. Either the landscapes have objectively changed so much or they changed me so much that my perception clashes against the difference so hard the pain pushes me forward. I think the immense longing I felt at the beginning was replaced by finding I can learn something from everyone. I have regrets, yet understand their bittersweetness is probably better than the saccharine. Being simultaneously connected and apart from everything gave me trust also in my dream realm, and so I was able to let myself make more experiments than I had in the past, let them linger, and develop them later. The pain of being the other, or on the outside, gradually became a gift that revealed internal thresholds for navigating connection, delineating and appreciating difference and space.
– So has there ever been a time when an experiment failed completely but it taught you something you might not have learned otherwise?
In terms of my art, the experiments I cannot say failed. Many of the works led to making more refined decisions in the work. As for experiments in life, those are numerous and taught me how much I cherish my personal values and reverence for personal relationships, peace, nature, learning and disciplined habits. These were often learned through sacrifices that might seem extreme to some people, and were painful and accidentally dangerous. Some of my friends joke about my sombre or melancholic affect that developed over the years, so this has led me to find ways to reinvigorate playfulness and comedy in my experiments.
– So what does it mean to bring back playfulness in your work in practice? Is it a decision you make before starting, or something that shows up once you’re already working?
I make the decision to find playfulness a priori. It has become an imperative to seek the comedy and light in each hour of working as well as in living – perhaps something anyone, no matter what their job, can relate to. For one, several of the themes and subjects in my work can be viewed as quite heavy – so it’s part of the balance. Then it is also the sincere question to the constructs of accepted thinking around privilege, responsibility and duty: why and who determined those things. And to ensure the resulting work is palatable to more people than less… the playfulness may be subtle. There is a great risk of kitsch when applying playfulness, so I have to really be both serious and playful about the playfulness as well.
– What message have you noticed recurring in your work and is this a conscious choice or did it happen by chance?
The work doesn’t seem to have a message per se but a resonance that can be felt, similar to the way a tonal sound creates a feeling.
Based on the feedback of viewers and those who see documentation, the message seems to be about the invitation to consider thoughts and feelings around the context of the concept of eternity.
For the purpose of serenity and beauty, attention is given to the creation of opportunity to reflect and grow awareness. This is what is meant by focusing on perception itself. And in that way, the way different minds interact with the works completes the work. I do all I can to ensure what I want to be transmitted arrives – even if it’s not really a verbal message.
– Speaking about your duty of making sure that your message is transmitted successfully, what does that look like in practice? Take a new character from idea to execution.
I am so glad you ask how I make sure my message is transmitted, because I would like to take down the myth of the artist knowing something deeper or more than people. The works I do often come from a singular, simple interest that turns out to be much more complicated in practice, as does finalising the ideal realisation of the work, which I often do not know myself when I start out. I work with what I have and what I know, which is also limited. To complete an artwork could be MAYBE faster if I had more resources to create, but I think I would also engage in the same careful reflective process to ensure each choice is considered.
So when I set forth to make a work, it only happens when the daily practices I do are met by external contexts. This means a sponsorship, a conversation with a mentor or someone I meet by chance, or a book I have read acts as a catalyst to see through the idea. This reflection and critical thinking process is often described as overthinking by several people, but I find it really valuable because fielding the feedback from anyone I can helps me land in a peaceful space with each choice. Without that sense of calm certainty, I could not bear the weight of the consequences the work will end up having when it’s entering into the world. So, the more diverse the people’s backgrounds, the better. I genuinely enjoy listening to most, and I must underline MOST but not all, points of view – though the perspectives that seem obviously hate-filled also help me discern how to create a context and present the work in a way where the meaning can arrive.
While in some ways art is a demanding dialogue aided by someone who is already well read, traveled, educated and so forth, it’s just as important, and perhaps even more important, that someone who is making the best of their life, whether or not they have access to the aforementioned experiences or interest in art at all, can also feel the meaning. This kind of quietness I hope arises within people who engage with my work gives me a sense that whether in the moment, or perhaps some years later, the meaning arrives. Of course there are also the statements I write and rewrite over and over again that can accompany the work – I also try to write these in a way so that they are not directive to the viewer’s mind but inviting the arrival of the meaning, again, not necessarily at the exact moment of viewing, but over time.
– How do you feel your work has influenced you as a person and/or in your relationships with other people?
My work has made me even more sensitive as a person, and constantly demands that I practice doubt and critical thinking, at which I am still not at the level I feel would be ideally beneficial. And while that is something I am repeatedly told I should not share, the transparency and vulnerability I was instructed to have by professors, teachers, mentors and people in the realm of culture work would, they said to me, be necessary to create strong, undeniable works of art. I feel my work has often impeded my ability to share important time and space with people I dearly love and care for. I fear my work habits have got in the way of creating the life I personally would like to live, and so I continually try to improve and find a healthier way of working and living.
