I never think about actual things when I'm painting. I'm not thinking, "I'm going to put a person here, a tree here and a bird there." The beginning stage is always the sound. From that, slowly, stories come about based on what I'm reading or thinking at the time, but if I didn't have that sound I don't know what I would do.
Ali BanisadrWhen I was taking art history I was always angry that we would skip certain chapters because "it wasn't important." Like, "Let's skip over the Japanese. Let's just get to Giotto, because that's where everything begins." It's like, no. Everything is relevant to me.
Ali BanisadrMy work makes people understand things in a visual way that I could never understand in a literal way - like the way you deal with and break down problems, and don't come up with answers, but [find] a pathway that becomes clearer.
Ali BanisadrThink about the way you go surfing on the Internet - you go from one thing to another. You can't really concentrate. I can't sit and read 10 pages on my computer. You'll read and then all of a sudden part of your brain is like, "What about that? ...You're not reading the whole book. You're reading fragments. Even though I think it's bad, I think it's interesting too, because that's the way my brain works.
Ali Banisadr"Motherboard," for me, has four different levels: the bottom part is the water, vegetation, and growth. The second part is the world with figures and animals; there's chaos and civilization. The third part is the digital zone - these red things are turning into really loud digital sounds. Then the fourth level is like ether and things turning into air. This idea of how we're becoming partly digitalized is really interesting to me.
Ali BanisadrI sometimes say the conflict in the work is the conflict of my own thoughts and anxieties. It's a civil war in my head. The top part [of my artwork] is you letting go and floating. You become part of the air and you've tapped into the heartbeat of the universe. I guess that's what people do when they meditate.
Ali Banisadr