Selected by Karen Lamassonne, artist, Atlanta
Aineki and I were both working at a lighting company in Atlanta, creating chandeliers and the like, and while she is a lot younger than me, we got along: we were both artists; she had lived in Colombia as a young girl, as I had done; her mother was Argentinian, as is my father. We became close – she came to my house, and when I visited hers I remember loving how her space smelled so beautifully of oil paint. She is now very involved in the art scene here, and going to her open studios and exhibitions helped me to become more involved locally too.
I identified with her work because, like so much of mine, it is about memories and personal photographs, moments from the past captured and reformulated in the present. She uses photographs from her archive – from her childhood and such – as the initial inspiration for a work, but then departs from those images, letting the paint and image develop its own life. Her paintings are figurative, and there is so much movement in them. There will often be botanical elements that flow into the image, or bodies of water or sections of landscape that merge into each other. I think we share a sense of Latin American gothic, we both revel in the human body. In Aineki’s paintings human parts appear and then disappear, there’s a sense of mystery and mood that envelops me in the layered scenes she conjures.
At her exhibitions she installs some works in interesting places. In one exhibition, very high up on the ceiling, a drawing of a small eye looked down at you, or a whole row of works on paper will be hung on a wall, but appear like a gallery frieze: there are eyes, parts of faces, nebulous atmospheres. She is prolific and creates work ranging from largescale to very small formats. I am always looking forward to what’s next in her world. She is getting much-deserved recognition.
I have a small work of hers here, pls chill (2019). It is a portrait of a young woman, she has dark hair and a pale face; there is something very cinematic, and very creepy, about her appearance. A hand appears in the foreground, offering a smoke, while the other hand holds a red flower. In the background the sky is blue, but framed by the dark brown, ominous block of paint to the right of the canvas. I love the creepiness of her work. Aineki, like me, has a background in film, and I think you can see that in the light and texture of her painting. It is like she has frozen a moment, so for all their formal painterly qualities, the work is also full of narrative, of possibility. Her work is full of characters: there’s another early painting I have, la que fuma (2022), of a woman smoking and drinking, looking weathered. Well, I identify with the woman in this painting of course, but there is something mysterious about her too, something Aineki is asking us to decipher, to participate in.
Karen Lamassonne, as told to Oliver Basciano
Aineki Traverso is a painter based in Atlanta and a current resident in the Studio Artist Program at Atlanta Contemporary. She obtained her degree from Sarah Lawrence College in 2013 with a focus on film theory. In 2024 Traverso received the Atlanta Artadia Award and the Edge Award from the Forward Art Foundation. She will have a solo show at Wolfgang Gallery, Atlanta, in March.
