Nostalgic Pasts | A Dystopian Present | Imagined Futures: The World Through the Lens of Alia Ali

This talk took place on August 25, 2020 as part of Alserkal.online. 

Yemeni-Bosnian-US multimedia artist Alia Ali (@studio.alia.ali) joined Gulf Photo Plus (@gulfphotoplus) and Alserkal Avenue (@alserkalavenue) for an artist talk to discuss her work and personal arts practice.

In conversation with GPP Director Mohamed Somji (@msomji) and arts curator Miranda McKee (@mirindoo), Alia traversed her broad and multi-faceted career, addressing her creative approach and diverse mediums and how she uses these to tackle issues of identity, physical borders, and the blurred lines between the objective and the subjective. The discussion was followed by a Q&A session, and it was hosted by Alserkal Avenue as part of their Alserkal Online programming. You can watch the conversation below:

In this talk, Alia also shared about her recent body of work, LOVE//حب, which seeks to reclaim the beauty and non-violence of the Arabic language. Citing the examples of the Arabic words for طالب (roman: talib) and مدرسة (roman: madrassa), meaning student and school, Alia discussed how US media has abducted and propagandized Arabic, translating these positive words to mean mean terrorist and religious training camp respectively.

“[The word] حب is the one Arabic word that I would most want non-Arabic speakers - in the present and the future - to be able to recognize, read, and say," she says.

You can learn more about LOVE//حب here.