Ala Younis is a Kuwaiti research-based visual artist, painter, and curator, based in Amman, Jordan.
20 Facts About Ala Younis
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Ala Younis's practice is based on found material, and on creating materials when they cannot be found or when they do not exist.
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Ala Younis graduated as an architect from the University of Jordan in 1997.
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Ala Younis holds a Masters in Research in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London since 2016.
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Ala Younis has produced art installations, video works, publications, temporary collectives, publishing projects, and curated exhibitions.
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Ala Younis's work was shown at the Institute du Monde Arabe, 9th Gwangju Biennial, Museum of Modern Arab Art in Doha, New Museum Triennial, 12th Istanbul Biennial, Home Works '5 Beirut, The Jerusalem Show, PhotoCairo 4 and other places.
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Ala Younis participated in the Asian Art Biennial, Dhaka and the Iran Biennial: Art in the Contemporary Islamic World.
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Ala Younis is a recipient of the Bellagio Creative Arts Fellowship, as well as art prizes from Cairo's 17th Youth Salon and Jordanian Artists Association.
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Ala Younis co-directed Global Art Forum 8, and has spoken in conferences and symposiums including Venice Agendas, Berlinale's Forum Expanded, Sweet Sixities Beirut, Global Art Forum 7 in Doha, and ThinkFilm in Berlin.
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Ala Younis is a member of the Academy of Arts of the World in Cologne, Germany.
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Ala Younis is a contributing editor for the artist magazine Ibraaz and a research scholar at the Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art, at the NYU Abu Dhabi.
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Ala Younis has collaborated with the Arsenal Institute for Film and Video Art since 2012 and in 2021, she became co-head of the Berlinale Forum Expanded together with Ulrich Ziemons.
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Ala Younis was the co-artistic director of the Singapore Biennale 2022.
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In 2013, for Kuwait's first national pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, Ala Younis curated "National Works".
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Ala Younis's projects begin with found objects and images that might initially seem odd or intriguing, for instance Nefertiti is an installation of video and defunct sewing machines that were produced and sold in Egypt after the 1952 revolution, and were among the country's plan to nationalize industrial production and to create productive symbols of Egyptian sovereignty.
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Ala Younis's found objects become part of a web of stories in which the personal is inextricable from the collective, like in the publication version of "Tin Soldiers" which is made of text and image portraits of contemporary formal Middle Eastern soldiers, and the virtual and alternative spaces they practice their version of militarism in.
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Oraib Toukan and Ala Younis collaborate on exploring film footage, discarded by the former Soviet Friendship Society in Amman.
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Ala Younis's "Plan for Greater Baghdad" was a result of his visit to Baghdad in 1957, yet it was never built.
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Ala Younis received the 2nd prize at the 17th Youth Salon, Painting for Non Egyptians, in Cairo ; and the 3rd Prize at the Annual Exhibition of Jordanian Artists Association in Amman.
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Ala Younis published "Needles to Rockets" with Motaz Attalla in 2009.