Biography
Amiwill Blueberry Shakes (born 1986 - )
Amiwill Blueberry is the uprising star of the international literary and art scene, who synthesizes poetry and visual arts in a gently-provocative way. His work represents the spirit of dissension and the idea of constant motion of the modern time. He derives his inspiration from observation of the rapidly changing world and the aesthetics of destruction . Melting words with imagery, he makes high-pitched poetry and his extremely expressive style of performing is very striking.
Triggered by the things which are going wrong, he explores the wild side of being human. Illustrating his time, he appeals to the genuine emotionality of people and explores how the obvious things can look extremely exciting or perverse from a different point of view.
His interest in routine manifests itself in his latest book “One imaginary boy”, which is based on the pictures of people from the streets Amiwill Blueberry had been taking while travelling in Europe. The earlier poems from the book “A voice from the sink” is also exhibited, re-edited and visualized especially for this show.
Triggered by the things which are going wrong, he explores the wild side of being human. Illustrating his time, he appeals to the genuine emotionality of people and explores how the obvious things can look extremely exciting or perverse from a different point of view.
His interest in routine manifests itself in his latest book “One imaginary boy”, which is based on the pictures of people from the streets Amiwill Blueberry had been taking while travelling in Europe. The earlier poems from the book “A voice from the sink” is also exhibited, re-edited and visualized especially for this show.
1986 - Amiwill Shakes is born on 6 april in Quantico, Virginia, the only kid in the family of the FBI-laboratory scientists.
1991 - His parents are invited to a top secrecy research lab and aren’t allowed to take their child with them. So at the age of five Amiwill comes to New York to live with his father’s sister, who is a famous makeup artist. During all the school years he will not live with his parents because of the secrecy of their job and will have to tell his classmates that he is an orphan.
1998 - Being one of the most fierce and uncontrollable kids in the class, Amiwill learns how to “charm” people and people get interested in him, so he has friends and even fans. Easily bored with school, often stays at home and discovers an immense library which his grandparents had left to their children
2000 - Gets extremely impressed with the Divine Comedy by Dante and makes first attempts to write poetry. At the age of fourteen discovers himself as a poet and wants it to become his main occupation. Because of the school nickname, calls himself Amiwill Blueberry and signs his poems as A.B.Shakes.
2001 - Formes a metalcore band with his school friends, called “I dance on your tender guts”. He is very happy with performing, but keeps writing poetry besides the lyrics for the band.
2002 - His mother dies after an accident in the laboratory, and neither her family nor her son are allowed to know the reason of death. After the funeral Amiwill returns to New York and burns all his school papers, drops out of school and breaks up with his girlfriend by sending her a poem “Twenty three reasons why i hate nice people like you”, which later will be included in his first book.
2003-2006 - The band performs a lot, but Amiwill is not satisfied with his development as a poet. In 2006, at the age of nineteen to get in touch with the literary scene of New York he prints all his poems at the copy machine at home,folds in a small books, and goes to the book fair. There he leaves all those booklets in toilets. The next day a few blogs mention the “mysterious toilet poet ”.
Inspired with his success, he sends those poems to the publishers and magazines, but gets no replies.
Becomes very depressed and leaves the band.
2007 - “no title, just a load of meaningless words” - the first exhibition, which happened by accident: his only friend of that time, Julian Smith, is the son of the famous gallerist
Daphne Smith, the owner of the “Flat Banana Gallery”. Once Amiwill and Julian got drunk, stole the keys and went to the gallery at night. There they were drinking all night, and Amiwil covered all the walls of the exhibition space with poems. When Daphne discovered the damage, it was too late to clean up - the opening was about to happen in an hour and so it was said that it was a secret plan. The exhibition had an enormous success. Amiwill Blueberry Shakes becomes famous at the age of twenty.
2008 - Performing in the galleries, mainly at the “Flat Banana Gallery”.
“Lyrical decomposition show”. Crushing porcelain while reading poems, mixing fake blood with glitters to use as ink for his poetry and playing guitar with a drill. Improvising and reading poems at the parties, collaborating with dj’s.
2009 - “A voice from the sink” is published, his photo is on the cover of the Rolling Stone magazine. “The striking view of an everyday life, witty and exceptional” - New York Times literary review.
2010 - A break from performing and writing. Amiwill spends a year travelling in Europe. During his travel he uses an analog camera to capture impressions visually, and begins to add visual part to his poems. Has an emerging interest in making poetry visual and using words as an input for an image.
2011 - Experiences working with images. Concentrates on a serie of paintings which he consider to present his poetry in the form of visual spells. Start working on an “One imaginary boy” serie. Prepares to publish a second book.
2012 - “One imaginary boy” is published. Amiwill starts performing again. In his performances he uses a visual background and video art which he creates by filming the process of destruction of his previous works.
2013 - Mainly works with video and performs as a videoartist
