360 Degree Sensual Experience, Vanguard Parties, Ceremony, and Environments.
Ali’s practice also hones in on a philosophical perspective regarding a human tradition of joy and celebration.
Ali's work deals with the rich history that humanity has in its past. She is constantly trying to create a space/experience where the modern art-goer can be reminded of their own ancestral history - most importantly on a visceral level .
She has created a contemporary art practice based on these naturalist and anthropological inspirations, in dialogue with traditions and mediums that reside in the art world. She sees herself working in the tradtions of several different contemporary artists - the powerful, out of the box, punk spirit of Gordon Matta-Clark, Alan Kaprow and the happening and the sculptural purpose and ancient time scale of Michael Heizer, the conceptual intermingling with the sensual of James Turrell, Cai Guo-!iang's sense of ritual, and Richard Long's primitivist scale.
She offers these inspirations in many contexts and capacities - from traditional gallery and field work to adventure driven parties, commercial events, and media platforms/magazines.
Pray For Rain
Private Land, Az
Pray for Rain was inspired by the Kula Ring in the Massim Archipelago, and many other gift exchanges of primitive cultures.
Installing the pools into the beautiful Sonoran desert was arduous and mythic. Hand building the sculptures over the course of several weeks with the help of several of friends architect Jesus Robles, Seth Olinsky, and Peter Baer, hand carrying them into the desert, sourcing water and hauling in rain to be returned to the earth.
Read more at Anyone Girl New Zealand.
Ice Fire Compass
Private Land, AZ
Sculptural Ice block with fire built on top of it which melted internally to glow in the compass directions. Beautifully the cardinal directions were mapped by shadow. The blocks of ice also were glowing with the color put off by the heat of the fire. The steam burning off the ice displayed the wind direction.
Read more at Velvet Dust Magazine.
Canoe Fire
KENNEDY Lake, AZ
Humanity feels the liveliness, archaism, and elemental beauty of fire naturally – it really doesn’t take much provocation in an artistic sense. The eloquent movement of the flames in the wind, or the speaking of the fuel turning to ash when drawn near to it. The mysterious movement of light illuminating, reflecting, cast onto, around and prohibited by the sculptural dimension of space and material that surround, creates a reflective and mesmerizing calm that so many of us sense as part of our evolutionary history.
Canoe Fire was a series of many small fires I floated onto a lake in Arizona – to create a sculpture which moved and floated in the wind and water. The ceremony was exquisitely beautiful.
Under The Same Sun
Dry LaKE BED, Joshua TREE, CA
PUBLISHED IN LA MOTOCYCLETTE:
...the moment, the endurance, the perfect circle, a racetrack with no straightaway, the piece is about the sun, and the sun was blocking my view of the track, and i was marking its trace. The track was invisible, and I was thinking about the old Dakota saying, about being remembered by the tracks we leave behind, and here I am making a circle track. While I was working with this concept on paper, I was obsessing over circles and their historic relevance to societies and societyʼs architecture informing a societyʼs language, but even more so, fundamental understanding -- sitting in a circle as a discussion. And I had wanted the the piece to be three dimensional, whereas to my understanding Heizerʼs concept was more of a drawing...
Read the full story.
Desert Table
Private LAnd, AZ
Upon returning from a surf trip in Mexico, collaborator Seth Olinsky and I decided to work on a series of earth art sculptures inspired by the raw and rugged beauty of the Arizona desert landscape. Our first work was to build a sculptural table that could later be used (see Gordon Matta-Clark and Carol Gooden’s Food Tribute). The sculptural elements, placement and materials were highly collaborative. Inviting friends and fellow artists Jeff Stokes and Chris Franklin to participate in the mythic experience of carrying/winding 30 foot oak beams up to the top of the 500 ft desert hill in which the table was hand built.
Tule Surfboard
DOHENY BEACH, CA
EXCERPT FROM LIGHTNING MAGAZINE:
The 36th Hour of my long winded stay, rotary style on grassy pasture, surrounded by whims of cattails, local hollering, bright skies, crisp weather, a diverse reach of ranchers and earth ecstatic rugged life-folk, i found myself birdman style snaking through ponds filled with various valuable, murky and beautiful reeds on one of these hot Idahoan mornings. Fresh, mossy and extraordinarily clean. I was taking a knife and a fairly sharp one at that, grabbing the Tule reed at its base, telling the reed, this is going to hurt and thanks in advance in case that helps. Lining the knife across at a diagonal angle and cutting the stalk free of the root. I stacked the cut reeds in various places afloat throughout the pond. Miraculously, yet unsurprisingly the bundles floated around me contentedly showing off their inner layering of hollow, yes, hollow reedlike bouyancy. I carefully meandered so as not to take too much from each patch and spy the duck hunters camo-ing up in the mud patch across the way.
Read more in Lightning Magazine.
Horizon Parallel
Mojave, CA / La motocyclette 4
Backcountry trip to create a sculptural long line of fire.
Read the full story in La Motocyclette 4. LA MOTO 4 launch event at the MoCA store in Los Angeles. April 12th at the Geffen Contemporary. The Event is being hosted by La Motocyclette and East Side Moto Babes.
Torch Ceremony
MOJAVE, CA
Ceremony and Sculpture passing torches into a constellation and canopy.