Alia Ali: Cartographies of Pattern

Transformation is fundamental and arguably inevitable. People of the diaspora know it all too well, both in motion and emotion. The horizontal transgressions across natural and manmade borders create multiple cognitive shifts that can only be organized as layered experiences accessible all at once. This inability to translate causes a rippling perspective effect, which can only be interpreted through symbols of familiar and invented languages and the sounds of mythical places and creatures.

Cartographies of Pattern invites the viewer to analyze their subjective perception in regards to inclusion and exclusion, and the threshold in which the transition between the two, occurs. What are the parameters that define each? The various series exhibited highlight the immediate duality that occurs in any given situation; to have one, you must have the other for either to exist. In this case, understanding inclusion requires us to be critical of what it means to be excluded. In order to be included, must one come from a state of exclusion or vice versa? The theme of duality extends to questioning the moment in which the mysterious becomes apparent, restraint becomes freedom, the underneath becomes the above, and illusion becomes reality.

The characters in the portraits, called —cludes, are wrapped in layers of fabric that shield them from interrelating with anything beyond the material. What are these fabricated barriers in society that inhibit the incorporation of others? Or are the obstacles just that: ideas, intuitions, fear, discriminations and ‘understandings’? Does inclusion mean acceptance? If so, does this definition lend itself to exclusion meaning rejection? Or do they both mean different points on the spectrum of tolerance?

Who are the ‘includes’ and who are the ‘excludes’?

—Alia Ali

The term “borderland” is most commonly referred to as the crossroads where nations collide. It is a porous zone that diffuses outward from an artificially-imposed, human-made punctuation called a border. Borders enact violence on the geography and identity of those living in borderlands. They are both imprints of power and scars of destruction. Borderlands, on the other hand, are the result of naturally occurring interactions among people and of nature trying to forge an existence in proximity to what is around them. BORDERLAND re-examines these demarcated zones as territories of exploration, drawing attention to them as transient physical spaces and a contemporary phenomenon from which the body of artwork is presented and the viewer is a participant. 

While the functional purposes of textile are evident, its indexical capacities are not. FLUX draws the viewer's attention to the textile as a document in which politics, economics and histories collide. Focusing specifically on wax print, this series addresses the naming and origin of these textiles. Wax print—a wax-resistant dyeing technique—exists under various monikers, including African wax print, Dutch wax prints, Ankara, and batik. These names reveal that colonial histories and economic reactions are woven into the processes and patterns that define the print. A vibrant aesthetic obscures an iniquitous past and embodies a dynamic narrative which accentuates the complex conditions by which these textiles have come into existence.

MIGRATION expands the breadth of FLUX, imbuing wax print fabric sourced from Senegal with celestial ruminations born out of troubled histories. The series was inspired by Sun Ra and June Tyson’s musical and theatrical collaboration, Enlightenment (1980). Tyson and Ra would be prolific in their output as Afrofuturist thinkers and creatives by subverting narratives and reorienting their audiences to expansive thinking beyond this world fraught with the traumas of war, colonization, incarceration, slavery, apartheid, and genocide. Collectively and individually, they would set the foundations for other communities to carve out their own radically imagined futures on their own respective terms. Examples include Indigenous Futurism, Sino Futurism, Palestinian Futurism and Yemeni Futurism.

In this way, MIGRATION comes as a rupture to the dystopic present in which migrants are caged within rigid structures designed for their ultimate failure. Rather than accepting these conditions, this body of work pushes one to reimagine their own narrative by breaking free from the bounds of the systems that have failed them. This series is dedicated to the travelers and thinkers, like Ra and Tyson, who spearheaded other Futurist thought by reconsidering our respective landings. By repositioning ourselves on multiple “starry dimensions,” we reassess how we think of home—from the physical to the metaphysical, earthly to cosmic, and linear to non-linear.

MIGRATION engages a global dialogue, highlighting patterns of trauma, erasure, and reconstructed identities experienced by numerous nations and diasporic communities across the globe. Collectively, the photographic sculptures in the series create a distorted constellation of imagery intended to suspend the viewer within the multiple horizons of possibilities.

FLOW references the intertwining histories, cultural narratives, and creative processes associated with ikat, borrowed from the Indonesian word meaning “to bind.” While ikat's origins are believed to be in Java, the fabric maintains roots across the globe, including India, Uzbekistan, Argentina, Bolivia, Mexico, Yemen, and Central and South East Asia. Today, it is most commonly referred to as ikat and has been adopted into other Anglo-European languages where the practice was never developed, but rather appropriated. Regardless of the differing names that each community uses to reference it, the process by which ikat is created engages a team of Master artisans and time tested methods.

INDIGO explores the multiplanar capacities of the dynamic indigo plant, pigment, and the array of blues that it renders. Indigo was once widely cultivated and traded globally, and is now used in textiles and holds cultural significance across the world from Japan, Mexico, Yemen, India, Senegal, Vietnam, China, and Laos. The production and practice of its harvesting and usage draws a constellation, mapping various functions of indigo across individual cultures that produce it.

Indigo unites us physically and cosmically, as our bodies are composed of 80% water and our gazes are drawn to the blue sky from birth, connecting us to the earth and to each other. It is no surprise, then, that the color has been understood throughout history and across different cultures as something that allows us to transcend and connect our physical bodies to the celestial. It is a constant for us all, whether we are settled or migratory, imprisoned or free. This series invites the viewer to reorient their relationship and understanding of the potentialities of color. It posits that color itself can serve as a means to embrace that which cannot be legible through a lexicon, but can only articulate a state of being—the state of existing between.

حب (ḥub) // LOVE, pushes back against the forced reorientation of the artist's native tongue, Arabic, and sparks a dialogue with one word, حب, reclaiming the beauty and nonviolence of the language. Employing photography, textile, and text, this body of work presents various points of entry to complex notions of inclusion, exclusion, erasure, and the politicization of the body and language.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Alia Ali ( عاليه علي) is a Yemeni-Bosnian-US multi-media artist. A child of migrant linguists, Ali has traveled to sixty-seven countries, lived in and between seven, and grown up among five languages. Her migrations have led her to process the world through interactive experiences and the belief that the damage of translation and interpretation of written language has dis-served particular communities, resulting in the threat of their exclusion, rather than a means of understanding. As an artist who exists on the borders of identifying as West Asian, Eastern European, a United States citizen, queer, culturally Muslim yet spiritually independent, her work explores cultural binaries, challenges culturally sanctioned oppression, and confronts the dualistic barriers of conflicted notions of gender, politics, media, and citizenship. Through her practice, Ali critiques linguistics and inherited political structures and narratives, while simultaneously attempting to counter the polarization and miscommunication that imperils communities across the world, encouraging viewers to confront their own prejudices.

Working between photography, video, and installation, Ali’s work addresses the politicization of the body, histories of colonization, imperialism, sexism, and racism through projects that take pattern and textile as their primary motif. Textile, in particular, has been a constant in Ali’s practice. Her strong belief that textile is significant to all of us, reminds us that we are born into it, we sleep in it, we eat on it, we define ourselves by it, we shield ourselves with it, and eventually, we die in it. While it unites us, it also divides us physically and symbolically. Her work broadens into immersive installations utilize light, pattern, and textile to move past language and offer an expansive, experiential understanding of self, culture, and nation. 

Ali’s research and practice are also informed by discourses of criminality, Yemeni Futurism, and feminist theory, all of which are tools to unpack practices of refusal and rupture. Ali calls upon oral histories to conceptualize these narratives, while reflecting on contemporary circumstances, in her native land Yemen, her adopted land the United States and the endless places and people that continue to  inspire her. Ali is currently expanding her practice by drawing on stories from Yemen including the nostalgic past of Queen Belquis of Saba (also known as the Queen of Sheba). By investigating histories of the distant past, she addresses the realities of the dystopian present in order to carve out spaces for radically imagined possibilities for the future in what has evolved to be Yemeni Futurism.

Her work has been featured in the Financial Times, Le Monde, Vogue Arabic, Art Review, and Hyperallergic. Her work is in collections at Princeton University, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and numerous international private collections. Ali is a graduate of Wellesley College and the California Institute of the Arts. She lives and works in Los Angeles and Marrakech, and is currently in residency at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program (RAiR) in New Mexico.