Ari Archer

Ari Archer (born Shahriyar Farshid / شهریار فرشید) is a New York–based archer, musician, composer, teacher, calligrapher, photographer, pianist, polyglot, aikidoka, and kyudoka. He is the Artistic Director of Flatverse Visual Studio and serves as Director, Lead Curator, and faculty member for Music and Visual Arts at the Kārgāh Center for the Arts in Brooklyn. Ari also works as a freelance visual artist and composer of electroacoustic music.

He began film photography at the age of five and piano at ten, later pursuing composition and music theory at Tehran’s prestigious Honarestan-e Musighi (Tehran Conservatory of Music). He continued his studies at the Komitas Conservatory in Yerevan, studying composition with Artur Avanesov and Vache Sharafyan, and receiving private instruction in orchestration, harmony, counterpoint, ear training, fugue, musical form, and analysis from Ashot Ghazarian.

In 2010, Ari was admitted to the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, where he further developed his voice as a composer. His principal mentors were Reinhard Febel and Christian Ofenbauer. He also studied electronic music, audiovisual media, and computer-assisted composition at the Studio für Elektronische Musik under Achim Bornhöft. Additional studies included conducting (Wolfgang Niessner), piano (Tünde Kurucz), music theory (Franz Zaunschirm), orchestration and instrumentation (Klemens Vereno), form and analysis (Klaus Ager), musicology (Wolfgang Gratzer), and counterpoint and fugue (Klaus Feßmann).

Ari has participated in masterclasses and private instruction with renowned composers including Helmut Lachenmann, Chaya Czernowin, Beat Furrer, Enno Poppe, Thomas Larcher, and Georg Friedrich Haas, among others. His music has been performed internationally by ensembles and soloists such as ensemble recherche, Kairos Quartet, Phorminx, Marino Formenti, and Gertrud Steinkogler, with appearances at festivals including Wien Modern and Salzburger Dialoge.

A primarily self-taught photographer, Ari was first mentored by his late brother—a calligrapher, poet, graphic designer, and visual artist. He later refined his craft through private studies in aesthetics theory and photographic technique and completed advanced programs at the International Center of Photography in New York.

His deep background in classical and contemporary music profoundly shapes his photographic vision—particularly his sensitivity to light, balance, and movement. Ari’s portraiture draws on a broad lineage of visual tradition, from ancient Egyptian art to contemporary photography. His studio work focuses on intellectually and artistically fluent individuals—musicians, authors, thinkers, and performers—capturing their presence with nuance and expressive clarity.

Originally from Tehran, Ari has lived in Yerevan, Salzburg, Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and Sacramento. His professional path has also included roles as a sales associate at Macy’s and a private client banker at HSBC in Beverly Hills. A devoted polyglot, Ari speaks Armenian, English, German, and Farsi fluently, and has some knowledge of Arabic and other languages. Outside his artistic work, he enjoys rollerblading and the disciplined practices of Aikido and Kyudo—pursuits that embody the same flow, harmony, and intentionality that define all aspects of his creative life.