Miki Carmi

Miki Carmi was born in Jerusalem and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. He completed his MFA at Columbia University in 2005, and his BA from Bezalel, Jerusalem in 2002. He has had solo shows at Stefan Stux Galley, NY, Beaumont Public, Luxemburg, Anne De Villepoix, Paris, and has participated in exhibitions at SOMA Museum, Seoul, MONA Museum, Tasmania, and HVCCA, Peekskill, NY. He has published two art books : Disembodied Archetypes (with Tamy Ben-Tor), 2009, and Miki Carmi, 2012 (with an essay by Coco Fusco). his work has been reviewed by Donald Kuspit in Artforum (M,arch 2006), Ken Johnson at the NY Times, and Michael Wilson (Time-Out NY 2010). He is currently represented by Stefan Stux Gallery, NY.

1) What or who inspired you to want to be an artist?
My mom’s thorns drawings were the first image that I remember to inspire me to do something visual.

2) What was your creative journey that has brought you to where you are in your career today?
I can’t identify with the notion of a “career” but I can associate your question with artistic evolution. So in that case: constant fascination with physiognomy of people, their racial identity, their decay, and eventually the translation of all those phenomena into a painterly vocabulary.

3) What do you need as an artist today?
I’m struggling to keep my creative freedom and isolation which are also intersect with having some financial stability, and maintaining a family.

4) What creative project are you working on now? 
Right now, in addition to my ongoing never-ending head paintings project, I’m working on a series of gestural drawings and the second collaborative book with Tamy Ben-Tor, followed by a collaborative show at CCA in Tel Aviv.

5) Where do you see yourself and your career in 10 years?
I always tend to sink into total despair regarding the future of my work but I guess there is always a reason to keep doing that.

6) What does it mean to you to have an organization like AICF available in the art world?
I can’t answer this one: I can talk only of my personal relation to AICF, which enable me to finish my studies at Columbia University—I will always cherish that.

Miki Carmi