You are the infinite light
An1 makes dark, figurative one-of-ones in Los Angeles, and writes about them like a poet who means it. This is why I gave INFERNO a home, and what she said when I did.
animkhitaryan →
An1, who signs as @an1eth, is the artist behind the INFERNO and AN1 collections: dark, figurative one-of-ones minted through Manifold, made in Los Angeles. I came for the images, which are heavy and beautiful and unafraid of the shadow. I stayed for the way she talks about them.
A voice that means it
Most artists post a mint link. An1 writes. When a piece of hers sold onto the chain she posted, My voice has found a new kind of immortality, written into the chain of eternity and the blockchain. She writes in character too, in the register of the work itself: Hear me, mortals. I have come to this world to kill injustice, to strike where cowardice reigns. I am the shadow that hunts it. And she writes as herself, about the things that made her, including a hard anniversary for Armenia that she did not hide from her feed. You do not get that range from a JPEG. You get it from a person, and she is one.
What she said when I collected her
The reciprocity here still gets me. YOU ARE THE INFINITE LIGHT is now owned by the 7 of the 7s, @pengwinpants, she wrote when that one came home, and the description, she said, said it all. When another arrived: In a Mirror, Darkly. Owned by @pengwinpants. Thank you so much for giving this piece a safe home, Aaron. And when I grabbed an edition of I Bled For Love, she thanked me by name with the last two editions still open. A safe home. That is what she called it, and that is what I try to be.
Why she gets a room
INFERNO is not comfortable art and it is not supposed to be. It is one of the reasons this collection has a spine and not just a mood board. Her room holds what I have, in her own words as much as in mine. Read the work, then read what she wrote next to it.