FARMINGTON — The University of Maine at Farmington Emery Community Arts Center raises the curtain on the fall art scene on campus with an exhibit by multi-media artist Alia Ali. A stunning photography and textile-based installation, BORDERLAND will run from Sept. 1–Nov. 13, in the ECAC Flex Gallery, with an opening reception 5-7 p.m., Friday, Sept. 1. Gallery hours are daily from 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
An artist talk will be presented by Ali, Wednesday, at 11:30 a.m., Aug. 30, in the Emery Performance Space. These events are free and open to the public.
The term “borderland” is most commonly referred to as the crossroads where nations collide or the naturally occurring interactions among people and nature trying to forge an existence in proximity to what is around them. BORDERLAND examines these relationships 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.
Ali’s work asks the questions: What are the fabricated barriers in society that inhibit the incorporation of others? Or are the obstacles just that: ideas, intuitions, fear, discriminations and ‘understandings’?
When all is said and done, borders shift and textiles disintegrate, but if well preserved and nurtured with culture, knowledge and grace, they remain intact. Borderlands, like textiles, are territories of exploration and zones in which we will be judged for our humanity.
A Yemeni-Bosnian-American multi-media artist, Ali has traveled to 63 countries, lived in seven and grown up among five languages. Her extensive travels have led her to process the world through interactive experiences. Her most comfortable mode of communication is through image and multi-sensory mediums.
As a child of two linguists, Alia believes that the interpretation of verbal and written language has dis-served particular communities and presents more of a threat than a means of understanding. It is for this reason that Alia’s aesthetic interests stem from people, place, and the processes which unite and divide us, all at once.
Her work reflects on the politics and poetics of contested notions surrounding the topics of identity, physical borders, universality, mental/physical spaces of confinement, and the inherent dualism that exists in everything. Her work blurs the lines between what we claim to be objective and subjective, illusion and reality, truth and interpretation.
Ali has just completed working on two transglobal projects, the People of Pattern and BORDERLAND. She is exploring cultures and conflicts through the medium of textile and the processes of making them. Her projects have most recently taken her to Oaxaca, Mexico; Bokhara, Uzbekistan; Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Sapa, Vietnam; Kyoto, Japan; Udaipur, India; and Lagos, Nigeria.
She is a graduate of the United World College of the Atlantic (UWCAC) and holds a B.A. in Studio Art and Middle Eastern Studies from Wellesley College. Her work has been featured at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Marrakech Biennale as part of the Swiss-Moroccan KE’CH Collective, Gulf Photo Plus Dubai during Art Week Dubai 2017.
Her most recent series, BORDERLAND has been exhibited at Mondo Galeria in Madrid, Spain; Galerie Siniya 28 in Marrakech, Morocco; and Space Gallery in Portland, Maine. She has been awarded the Alice C. Cole ’42 Grant of Wellesley College, LensCulture’s Emerging Talent Awards 2016 and Gold Winner in a Fine Art Category of the Tokyo International Foto Awards.
