Biography

JOHN ROMI, FRSA

Founder of Cuneiformism

John Romi is a Swedish-American artist and structural theorist whose practice bridges the origins of human record-keeping with the systemic logic of contemporary architecture. Holding a Master of Science in Engineering, Computer Science, and Graphic Arts from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Romi utilizes his spatial engineering framework not to digitize the present, but to structurally resurrect the ancient past.

He is the founder of Cuneiformism, a movement recently codified by Dr. Hanna Fatuhi, PhD, as the first modern style to formalize the world's oldest human communication systems into a 21st-century visual language.

Drawing deeply from the living history of Sumerian and Akkadian scripts, Romi refuses to let these ancient Mesopotamian voices fade into antiquity. He translates the cuneiform wedge, originally pressed into clay millennia ago to record human laws, liberations, and sanctuaries, into monumental, load-bearing architectural entities. He reimagines these archaic signs not as static relics or cold data points, but as vital, dynamic structures, fusing ancient human intent with precise geometric rhythms.

Constructed with deliberate texture, aggressive palette knife techniques, and strict spatial logic, Romi’s practice, anchored by his overarching framework of Deep-Time Equilibrium, explores how the immense weight of human history can be permanently safeguarded through physical materiality. The resulting canvases operate as heavy, unyielding archival vessels, demanding that the viewer confront the surviving pulse of early civilization.

Operating at the intersection of deep antiquity and systemic engineering, Romi’s codification of Cuneiformism is currently generating significant institutional engagement. His translation of the ancient mark into a contemporary structural language has opened active dialogues with the Ancient Western Asian department at The Morgan Library & Museum, and his conceptual framework has been acknowledged by the Director’s Office at the Tate.

Romi is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).

Education

• 2022 - Art Business, Sotheby's Institute of Art
• 2003 - Masters of Science in Engineering, Computer Science, Graphic Arts and Multimedia. The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden
• Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA)
  
  

Selected Institutional & Academic Dialogues:

• 2025 - The Morgan Library & Museum (Ancient Western Asian Department) - Archival Dialogue
• 2025 - The Tate Director’s Office - Design & Institutional Acknowledgment
• 2024 - Cuneiformism Codified by Dr. Hanna Fatuhi, PhD