Benrubi Gallery is pleased to announce Alia Ali’s second solo exhibition with the gallery.
Alia Ali is a Yemeni-Bosnian-US multi-media artist. Her work explores cultural binaries, challenges culturally sanctioned oppression, and confronts the dualistic barriers of conflicted notions of gender, politics, media, and citizenship.
Working between language, photography, video, textile, 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 is central to Ali’s practice. She reminds us of how significant fabrics are to our collective humanity: 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 are swathed in it as we are put to rest. And while it unites us, it also divides us physically and symbolically. Ali’s work broadens this into immersive installations to move past language and offer an expansive, experiential understanding of self, culture, and nation. Weaving us, so to speak, to each other and in turn back to ourselves.
“Glitzch” considers this idea of a potentially minor technological malfunction, the inherent implication of a glitch is that of a surprise mistake or misstep within a specific framework or system of which it is breaking the rules. The glitch calls attention to that which it disrupts; the system that would have otherwise gone unnoticed and unquestioned. Ali’s “Glitzch” is an activated force, not a passive phenomenon. If an aspect of a system is in conflict with the framework that contains it, then it can attack that framework and call attention to the mistakes inherent in that system. (Zeller, “alia ali….) Glitzch can be a battle cry. Glitzch can be an opportunity.
Alia Ali is a graduate of Wellesley College and the California Institute of the Arts (CALARTS). She lives between New York and Marrakech and has exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions and art fairs across the globe. Her work is in collections at the British Museum, Princeton University, New Orleans Museum of Art, Tucson Museum of Art, Museum of Photography in Chicago, Benton Museum of Art, and a myriad of international private collections. Ali is a Jameel Fellow at the Victoria and Albert Museum and a Global Nikon Ambassador. Her work is held in notable public collections around the world and has been featured in publications including The New York Times and the Financial Times.
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