Years later, in the mid-1980s, when I moved to America, I encountered Andy Warhol's very large portrait of Mao at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Chuck Close's large portraits, as well as Alex Katz and other American artists. For many years I painted with a sitter in front of me: I would make a drawing first with pencil or charcoal on canvas and then paint with oil. Reflecting on the beginning stages of his painting, Kami explains how his foundational years merged with his interest in American art of the 1980s: "My mother was a portrait painter, so I have been painting portraits since I was a child. Konya (2007), for instance, includes several photographs from Rumi's mausoleum in Konya, where he lived and died. their big eyes and their otherworldliness." Other influences include 13th- and 14th-century Persian poetry, especially the writings of the Sufi poet Rumi. He has recounted that he was impressed by their "neutral expressions. He considered these ideas in relation to early Egyptian Fayum mummy portraits, which he first saw at the Louvre. During his student years in Paris, Kami was profoundly interested in Lévinas's ideas regarding the human face. His experiences viewing ancient architectural structures and the vast, dry desert left a significant impression on him, which he later carried out into his artwork. Influences Īs a child, Kami traveled frequently with his family. Īfter living in Paris for over a decade, Kami moved to New York in 1984, where he continues to live and work. However, his study of film led him to realize that he preferred a more solitary practice, and he returned to painting. He then continued his education at the Conservatoire Libre du Cinema Français in Paris in 1982. While in Paris he attended the lectures of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Henry Corbin, and Emmanuel Lévinas. from the Université Paris-Sorbonne in Paris, France, where he studied from 1976 to 1981. After high school Kami attended the University of California, Berkeley, in 1975, then received his B.A. His first encounters with art came at an early age, as he spent time with his mother, also a portrait painter, in her studio in their family home.
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