Ali, Alia

Yemeni-Bosnian, b. 1985 Austria

BiographyIn her حب (ḤUB) // LOVE series (2021), Alia Ali overlays the word “love” in Arabic, her native tongue, across images of figures wrapped in colorful fabric. The series explores imperialism, political structures, racism, and criminality, revealing the misinformation spread by reductionist western interpretations of Arabic people. Through handwriting the word for love and overlaying onto textiles and images, Ali reclaims both language and bodies that tend to become politicized and misconstrued through false narratives. The text oscillates between the foreground and background of the image to show the myriad of definitions it encompasses, rejecting the static-ness that is applied to it to fit certain agendas.

Alia Ali has been included in exhibitions at 193 Gallery, Paris, France; Galerie Peter Sillem, Frankfurt, Germany and London, UK; Gulf Photo Plus, Dubai, United States Emirates; Intersect Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA; and Blue Sky Gallery, Portland, Oregon, USA. Ali’s work is in the collections of the British Museum, Princeton University, the Tucson Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and various other private collections internationally.