Throughout Mot(if), Alia Ali wishes to highlight the theme of inclusion and exclusion through silhouettes covered with fabrics from different regions of the world, and questions the visitor on his own position 'Is he the included or the excluded?
The fabric, timeless icon of identification, reveals itself through its history(s) to be a carrier of illusions, and takes a major place at the heart of the practice of Alia Ali, Yemeni-Bosnian-US multimedia artist. Wax on the one hand, blurs the traces of her colonial and capitalist history by throwing a colorful filter on it, with rich and sometimes deceptively identifiable patterns. Under the artist's hands, it becomes polymorphic, questioning the way things are named, translated, reinterpreted, but also the initial reason of their productions. Their origin is indeed very different from their contemporary names, which themselves sometimes mislead on their true place of production. On the other hand, through her photographic sculptures and installations using complex textiles such as Ikat, Alia Ali highlights the lexical richness perceptible in the creation of these motifs. She conceptualizes this hyper-optical collaboration between yarn, dye and the senses, while noting the unrewarding cultural appropriation of which they are the object.
Reorientations are also studied, challenging the viewer to consider linguistic uses. Indeed, contemporary recuperations and cultural expectations, still too often erroneous, are defused under the multiple-entry prism of the word Hub/Love. Photography, textile and writing unite to orient the viewer towards complex notions of inclusion, exclusion, erasure and politicization of body and language. The artist thus questions the viewer's gaze and the unconscious projections that accompany it, while breaking the boundaries of language, which has become a motif and a source of refraction for the most resolute consciences.
