Amazing Review in Berlin Art Magazine Ignant

Couldn't be more honored to be featured up on IGNANT next to JR and Christo.  THANKS SO MUCH!!!

"Living and working in the Sonoran desert,  Ali Beletic creates an experience allowing access to ancient emotions and latent instincts through her conceptual art installations. From traditional gallery and field work to adventure-driven parties, Beletic’s intention is to evoke wild instincts within the context of the art world. And so the motives such as primeval rituals, vast natural spaces and liberating journeys carry throughout her work, inviting the viewers – or participants – to recreate the experience of their ancestors."   - IGNANT

SEE THE FULL ARTICLE HERE.

Iluminated Passage

I have a light sculpture up in Joshua Tree as part of the Joshua Tree Arts Festival  this weekend curated by Boxo Projects and Metacurator.  I am installing lights into a granite boulder field that people can hike/climb through.  The sculpture will reveal itself, as the sun sets.  Come check it out!!!! At Boxo Projects at 9pm. 

Pray for Rain

Installed Pray for Rain in the beautiful Sonoran desert, you must walk there by foot. The mahogany and glass pools glow in the moonlight and the water blows in the wind. The opening ceremony and party  – equal parts drumming ceremony, reflective moon pools, clay sculpting, hand drilled torches and joyous celebration.

The ceremonial aspect of the work began at dusk with drummers hidden throughout the desert. The opening drummer and I called back and forth and as one of the children in the audience noted ‘The mountain talked back’. The echo was at least a whole second delay – and great participation of the landscape. When recording with drum group AFI in Cape Coast, Ghana in 2009, Kweku and I talked about how their elders used drums to communicate distances. Inspired by this ancient communication – I was excited to compose this drum performance for drummers scattered throughout the desert.  Musician Seth Olinsky co-composed and lead the drumming.  The night definitely aroused the senses, evoked an earthy celebration and left everyone with an imaginative story to walk away with.

Poet Dot Devota and resident artist and musician Jeremy Thompson concluded the ceremony with me by scooping water via earthen and brass bowls and pouring onto the desert’s well known Creosote plant – so all audience members could be ignighted with the familiar Sonoran fragrance of the rain.

Canoe Fire

Humans feel the liveliness, archaism, and elemental beauty of fire naturally – it really doesn’t take much provocation in an artistic sense.  The eloquent movement of the flames, the fuel turning into ash, its potency and beauty.  The mysterious movement of  light illuminating, reflecting, cast onto, around and prohibited by the sculptural dimension of space and material that surround, creates a reflective and mesmerizing calm that so many of us remember, sense deep reflection of our evolutionary survival.  It has been an honor to create these pieces which have been such a beautiful and ceremonial conversation with my surroundings and the earth that I know and walk upon.

Working with fire as a sculptural medium is very harmonizing and more than just artistic – there is a deep sense of relating to your own humanity and ancestry.

Wild Fire Sculpture #2 was a series of fires I floated onto a lake in Arizona – to create a sculpture which moved and floated in the wind and water.  The ceremony was exquisitely beautiful.

Desert Table #1