[Poet Spotlight] Anida Youei Ali

Anida Yoeu Ali (b.1974, Battambang) is an artist whose works span performance, installation, video, images, public encounters, and political agitation. She is a first generation Muslim Khmer woman born in Cambodia and raised in Chicago. After residing for over three decades outside of Cambodia, Ali returned to work in Phnom Penh as part of her 2011 U.S. Fulbright Fellowship. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach to artmaking, her installation and performance works investigate the artistic, spiritual and political collisions of a hybrid transnational identity.

Ali’s artistic work has been the recipient of grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council. Ali earned her B.F.A. from University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) and an M.F.A. from the Art Institute Chicago.

She is a founding collaborative partner of Studio Revolt, an independent artist run media lab in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Studio Revolt’s public performances and resulting images of Gallery X and Public Square were part of Our City Festival 2011 and 2012 (Phnom Penh). Ali’s "The Buddhist Bug," a multidisciplinary work that investigates displacement and identity through humor, absurdity and performance, has been exhibited in Phnom Penh galleries, Singapore International Photography Festival, Malaysia Heritage Centre Singapore, Southeast Asia ArtsFest London, and featured at the 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale where Ali participated as an artist in residence.

In 2015 "The Buddhist Bug" was featured in the Open Sea exhibition at the Musée d’art Contemporain (Lyon, France) and at the Asia Pacific Triennial 8 at the Queensland Art Gallery (Brisbane, Australia) where a newly commissioned video of the series was premiered. Additionally, Ali performed a new piece, "Beheadings," at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France), specifically commissioned for the "Secret Archipelago" exhibition. Later she exhibited works from the "Enter" series at the international event Lille 3000 (Lille, France). Ali’s artworks are included in several private collections and the public collection of the Mainland Art Fund, Australia.