"UN-FOLD-ER", photo credit likabari 2020
"D!s", photo credit likabari 2022
36,201', photo credit Philippe Gerlach 2021
Name
Melika Akbari (likabari)
Biography
Akbari is born in 1992 in Tehran, Iran, and is an interdisciplinary performance and visual artist based in Berlin. After finishing her studies in architecture, her movement background in different sports and dance fields (Flamenco-ats-improvisation) as a professional trainer and performer led her to study mac at HZT University in Berlin. She works as a choreographer, performer, model, stage designer, stylist, and photographer. Her first language is body language, then visuals, and then the alphabet. Her mac and post-mac projects are conceptual performances, short dance films, performing live and in films, stage designs, modeling, and capturing in collaboration with different artists. Her pre-mac projects are photography, architectural drawings, performing in theater, underground flamenco dance events, music videos, and modeling. Her conceptual works are experimental, multilayered, detail, and process-oriented, research and improvisation based. Her practice includes moving, writing, drawing, interacting with objects, sound, and space and are space and time specific and could be defined as a game between movement, sound, object, and language; in her games, she blurs the line between reality and imagination and creates a dialogue between elements to explore their relation.
Category Tags / Research Areas
Artist Statement
"Nothing drives me more than what holds me back.
To cross points, spots, and lines, borders I answer with questions and question my answers.
I go further away from what is conventional and define issues out of normal boundaries to seek salvation where the line between paradoxes is drawn.
I show through contrast and I see existence through duality.
I set a flexible structure and positioned elements in opposition and harmony.
I observe, analyze, dream, create, navigate, and move.
Fluctuate between left and right, up and down, and trip in and out. magnify details, break "big" into "small", un-fold, dis- connect, re-order and order dis-orders, and mirror errors.
What I do is "construction in reverse".
ı work with malfunctions and I give a new life to an element by mis-using it.
I re-cycle cycles to drag the new out of the old.
I twist, invert, reverse and reflect on and refer to, touch logic, weight thoughts, taste words, pass through images, sense feelings, and meet decisions at intersections and deal with consequences.
I take into perspective; shift mind state, focus and mood -therefore the room.
Define the comfort in the ‘’uncomfortable’’ and turn pressure into pleasure. I zone out and de-fine own time zone and comfortable zone.
I set rules and then I’ll bend them. invite pause to what’s going on for long and move what’s steady.
I dream realistically, take action radically and practice practicality.
I dissolve the past and future in the present tense. the process is constant and intense, I go deep and under "the under"; hang on, feedback while flashing back to fill in the gaps.
It’s always about the process and not the end result -about making mistakes and taking risks at edges to build bridges and pass by/on/to or through".
I go further away from what is conventional and define issues out of normal boundaries to seek salvation where the line between paradoxes is drawn.
I show through contrast and I see existence through duality.
I set a flexible structure and positioned elements in opposition and harmony.
I observe, analyze, dream, create, navigate, and move.
Fluctuate between left and right, up and down, and trip in and out. magnify details, break "big" into "small", un-fold, dis- connect, re-order and order dis-orders, and mirror errors.
What I do is "construction in reverse".
ı work with malfunctions and I give a new life to an element by mis-using it.
I re-cycle cycles to drag the new out of the old.
I twist, invert, reverse and reflect on and refer to, touch logic, weight thoughts, taste words, pass through images, sense feelings, and meet decisions at intersections and deal with consequences.
I take into perspective; shift mind state, focus and mood -therefore the room.
Define the comfort in the ‘’uncomfortable’’ and turn pressure into pleasure. I zone out and de-fine own time zone and comfortable zone.
I set rules and then I’ll bend them. invite pause to what’s going on for long and move what’s steady.
I dream realistically, take action radically and practice practicality.
I dissolve the past and future in the present tense. the process is constant and intense, I go deep and under "the under"; hang on, feedback while flashing back to fill in the gaps.
It’s always about the process and not the end result -about making mistakes and taking risks at edges to build bridges and pass by/on/to or through".