Alia Ali (@alia.ali.art) is a Yemeni Bosnian American multidisciplinary artist whose practice critically interrogates the systems of power embedded within culture and representation. Shaped by a transnational upbringing, Alia's artistic practice is informed by a deeply embedded global consciousness. This perspective is central to her distinctive body of work, which draws on the principles of Yemeni Futurism to reimagine cultural heritage through contemporary visual forms. Her work is concerned with exposing and unsettling entrenched binaries, particularly those surrounding gender, politics, media and citizenship, while challenging forms of oppression that are socially and culturally normalised.
Ali examines the politicisation of the body and the enduring legacies of colonisation, imperialism, sexism and racism. Central to her practice is the use of pattern and textile, which function not only as visual strategies but also as conceptual frameworks through which broader historical and geopolitical narratives are explored.
Reflecting on the origins of this sensibility, Alia situates her understanding of materiality within her lived experience in Yemen. Growing up, she was immersed in an environment defined by intricate geometry, saturated colour and layered textures. This early exposure fostered her enduring perception of fabric as a communicative system, capable of revealing cultural, geographic and social contexts. Throughout her work, the textile becomes a charged medium, capable of forging connections while simultaneously marking division, operating on both physical and symbolic registers.
Textiles occupy a particularly significant position within Ali's work, reflecting her conviction that they are fundamental to human existence. She emphasises their omnipresence in daily life, from birth to death, as materials that clothe, protect, identify and define us. While textiles possess the capacity to connect individuals across cultures, they simultaneously operate as markers of difference, reinforcing both physical and symbolic boundaries.
In the SHREDS series, Ali extends her investigation of material language by weaving strips of printed paper into textile-like sculptures that interrogate memory, perception, and meaning. Ali's practice draws on a foundational weaving technique traditionally taught in Indonesia. This method transforms waste into a vessel for knowledge, reinforcing weaving itself as a historical continuum shaped by transmission, repetition and adaptation.
In this series, printed newspapers are sliced into narrow bands, folded to resemble flattened wefts, and interlaced with cotton warps to construct woven surfaces. Unlike traditional soft fabrics, these paper-based weavings possess rigidity, producing sharp geometries alongside pronounced arcs and curves.
SHREDS explores the physical remnants of a world defined by impermanence, one where moments are recorded through language and images that attempt, and often fail, to fix time in place. Letters emerge from darkness as partial, eroded traces, evoking the instability of historical knowledge and the fragility of truth.
Angles function as both visual and conceptual devices within the work. They determine structure while simultaneously pointing to perspective, each angle suggesting a partial, subjective viewpoint. What is presented is not a complete account of an event, but a fleeting impression, easily forgotten, much like yesterday's news. History, too, operates in this way: moments of collective shock fade, only to resurface elsewhere in altered form. Atrocities that once seemed unimaginable repeat themselves, decades apart, reminding us how fragile remembrance can be.
© Alia Ali
The photographs invite sustained looking from multiple distances. Up close, the viewer attempts to read, only to find language stitched into illegibility. Meaning resists coherence. Stepping back reveals a broader visual order, where individual works connect to form a larger, unresolved image. Time collapses in this movement between scales. Without dates, the idea of a "current event" loses stability; today's urgency quickly becomes tomorrow's discard.
Eventually, the woven forms appear wrapped around bodies, evoking the disposability of paper itself, which is thrown away, reused, repurposed or forgotten.
Through SHREDS, Ali challenges viewers to step beyond the digital enclosures of contemporary life and reengage curiosity as an active practice. The work poses an ethical question: is it not our responsibility to read critically, to remember, to question inherited narratives and to situate the past within the present? Rather than offering resolution, SHREDS insists on plurality: acknowledging that multiple perspectives, temporalities and truths can coexist simultaneously.
We exist within an overwhelming flood of information and misinformation, which shapes our isolated understandings of the world and one another. By reconfiguring past narratives and engaging with present realities, the research seeks to envision alternative and radical futures, proposing new modes of existence that extend beyond loss, conflict, and disappearance. At its core, SHREDS interrogates perception, how realities are constructed, mediated, and internalised. The work asks whether we ourselves become enclosed within these fragmented systems, surrounded by partial information and competing narratives.
