Title: Small Ritual (for Humanity)

Media: Coffee on Japanese Mulberry Paper

Size: 35 x 28 cm

About the work: Slowly built up over 14 days, this painting bears hundreds of drops of coffee, each overlaid and inter-dispersed into a thin sheet of mulberry paper. Each drop was liberated from the bottom of my cup, the last bits of my morning coffee and precious remnants of a ritual which is shared by humans from all cultures, classes, creeds. In salvaging each drop, I honor each of their contributions to my morning.

In a time of fragmentation, violence, and suffering, let this painting be a reminder of the many ways in which our species also works together to achieve the complex and miraculous, and how the smallest of occasions may become moments of solace and reminders of our own humanity.

Bio: Informed by a strong sense of place and his multi-cultural identity (Iranian/Norwegian raised in rural Hawai'i), Kamran Samimi's practice centers on natural and indigenous ephemera (stones, wood, pigment, and land) as conduits to explore the intricate dynamics, tensions, and histories that exist between human and non-human ancestors.

Samimi has been exhibiting art since 2008, and has had solo exhibitions at The Third Line, Dubai, the Sharjah Art Museum in United Arab Emirates, Minnesota Street Projects in San Francisco, the Honolulu Museum of Art, and the Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design.