Anida Yoeu Ali
b. 1974, Battambang, Cambodia
Lives and works in Washington State, USA
Anida Yoeu Ali is an interdisciplinary artist whose works span performance, installation, new media, public encounters, and political agitation. She is a first-generation Muslim Khmer woman born in Cambodia and raised in Chicago.
Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach to artmaking, her installation and performance works investigate the artistic, spiritual, and political collisions of a hybrid transnational identity. Ali is the winner of the 2014-2015 Sovereign Asian Art Prize for her series ‘The Buddhist Bug’, a multidisciplinary work that investigates displacement and identity through humour, absurdity, and performance. Ali has performed and exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, Musée d’art Contemporain Lyon, National Art Gallery of Malaysia, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture and Design, and Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art.
Her newest performance series ‘The Red Chador’ embodies how the mere existence of a Muslim woman can be misinterpreted in an era of heightened Islamophobia. Her artistic works have been the recipient of grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, Art Matters Foundation, Ford Foundation, National Endowment of the Arts and Tacoma Arts Commission. Ali’s pioneering poetry work with the critically acclaimed performance group ‘I Was Born with Two Tongues’ (1998-2003) is archived with the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Program and the Hemispheric Institute. Currently based in Tacoma, Ali is also the co-founder of Studio Revolt, an independent artist-run media lab whose works have agitated the White House, won awards at film festivals, and have redefined what it means to create sans-studio and trans-nomadically.
Ali holds an MFA from School of the Art Institute Chicago (2010) and a BFA from University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1998). Ali currently serves as an Artist-in-Residence at the University of Washington, Bothell where she teaches courses in Interdisciplinary Arts, Global Studies, and American & Ethnic Studies.
Anida Yoeu Ali will return again to Oahu for more work with ‘The Red Chador: Genesis I’ performance in 2022 as part of ConFest Hawaii 2022.