Alia Ali: Project Series 53 presents four bodies of recent work by Yemeni-Bosnian-US artist Alia Ali that explore themes of diaspora, migration, and identity through the lens of Afro- and Yemeni Futurism. Informed by the artist鈥檚 own transnational and multilingual upbringing, these works use visual language鈥攑hotography, textiles, videos, and installations鈥 to create a new lexicon unfettered from the colonial violence inherent to language.
In the Benton鈥檚 lobby, the 丨亘 / Love installation features the Arabic word for love鈥 丨亘鈥攔epeated across photographs of veiled figures and the hand-painted lobby wall, subverting the stereotypes of Arabic that link the language exclusively to geopolitical conflicts. The丨亘 / Love installation is a gesture of linguistic reclamation.
The abstract and layered film 賲赖噩乇 / Mahjar is the central component of Ali鈥檚 丕賱賳噩賲 丕賱丕丨賲乇 / The Red Star installation. The film鈥攚hich includes footage recorded by the artist, found footage, sounds recorded on Mars by NASA, interviews from individuals of the Yemeni diaspora, news clippings, and music by Yemeni musicians (including Israeli-born Yemeni icon Ofra Haza)鈥攖ells two stories: the present-day reality of violence enacted upon Yemen by outsiders, and a radically imagined future in outer space, inspired by a Yemeni myth about the descendants of the Queen of Saba鈥檃/Sheba inheriting the Red Star, Mars. Influenced by the artist and poet Etel Adnan, 丕賱丕丨賲乇 / The Red Star consists of hand-painted imagined characters inspired by the Arabic, Hebrew, and Sabean languages. Addressing the origin and history of the humanitarian and political crisis in Yemen, the related film .
The exhibition also includes photographs from Ali鈥檚 FLUX series, in which she draws the viewer鈥檚 attention to textiles as documents where politics, economies, and histories collide. Figures enveloped in wax-print fabrics contrast against vivid backgrounds of hyper-optic motifs, drawing on Ali鈥檚 research into Dutch colonial trade routes of Javanese wax-resist textiles.
This exhibition is the first installment of the Project Series at the new museum and will be accompanied by a publication and programmed events. The exhibition is curated by Senior Curator Rebecca McGrew, with Independent Curator Hannah Grossman.
