Alia Ali

Alia Ali (Austria, 1985) is a Yemeni-Bosnian-American multi-media artist and visual storyteller. Having traveled to sixty-three countries, lived in seven and grown up among five languages, her most comfortable mode of communication is through image and multi-sensory mediums. Ali’s extensive travels have led her to process the world through interactive experiences. As a child of two linguists, Alia believes that the interpretation of verbal and written language has dis-served particular communities and presents more of a threat than a means of understanding. It is for this reason that Alia's aesthetic interests stem from people, place, and the processes which unite and divide us, all at once. Her work reflects on the politics and poetics of contested notions surrounding the topics of identity, physical borders, universality, mental/physical spaces of confinement, and the inherent dualism that exists in everything. Ali’s work blurs the lines between what we claim to be objective and subjective, illusion and reality, truth and interpretation. Ali is a graduate of the United World College of the Atlantic (UWCAC) and holds a Bachelor of Arts in studio art and Middle Eastern studies from Wellesley College. Ali’s studios are based in New Orleans and Marrakech.