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Anahita (Ani) Bradberry is an Iranian-American artist and writer creating sculptural situations with plasma light. As organic bodies and minimal geometries, her practice is an exercise in life-forming: filling tubular vessels with pulsing plasma—the luminous fourth state of matter—and arranging the ethereal light in conversation with its surroundings. Each object is simultaneously a multidimensional line and an atmospheric field.

These glowing paths explore the celestial relationship between illumination, container, and viewer, noting ways in which the built and natural environment is just as much a part of the light’s existence as the source itself. Her work seeks poetic commonality between the hum of a bar neon and the plasma warmth of the sun itself, often exploring a site-responsive state of alienation that is defined by oscillating identities and cultural memory.

Plasma lamps are essentially alive: “mortal” in their fragility, prone to unexpected internal behaviors, and reliant on external power sources. She finds the lack of predictability in materials such as neon gas and other organic matter as a valuable characteristic, allowing the artwork autonomy and evolution over time.

Her path into art-making was paved in graduate study of Japanese Modern and Contemporary Art History, with special attention to Mono-ha, Gutai, Jikken Kobo, and the avant-garde photography of Otsuji Kiyoji. Post-thesis, she continues to reflect on these collectives’ exhibition practices that sparked collective conversation between material autonomy, organic matter, play, and poetic humanism.

 

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Anahita has been featured in exhibitions at Women & Their Work Gallery (TX), Co-Lab Projects (TX), MASS Gallery (TX), ArtSpring Lichtkunstfest (Berlin), Dominique Gallery (LA), Two Six Eight Bowery (NYC), the Washington Project for the Arts (DC), Transformer (DC), VisArts (VA), the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center (DC), George Washington University's Gallery 102 (DC) and CICA — the Czong Institute for Contemporary Art (South Korea). Anahita earned an MA in Art History in 2015 on Japanese Modern and Contemporary Art from American University (Washington, DC), conducting primary research in Tokyo with the help of a Mellon Grant and lecturing on her research at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2016. She later assisted in the archival projects at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art as a Research Assistant. During her time in DC, she co-founded DIRT: an accessible online platform for unconventional art criticism and intimate artist interviews. From there, she continued archival practices in NYC as a knowledge management consultant for architecture and design firms.

In 2024, the City of Austin and the Trail Conservancy commissioned the monumental Sun Poem through the TEMPO Public Art Program: a year-long installation at the historic Seaholm Water Intake Facility landmark in downtown Austin. Ani is a contributing member of MASS Gallery, a volunteer-run collaborative exhibition space in Austin, TX. 

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Washington City Paper — Now More Than Ever (2017)

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