Ala Younis

Ala Younis is a research-based artist and curator, based in Amman. Younis initiates journeys in archives and narratives, and reinterprets collective experiences that have collapsed into personal ones. Through research, she builds collections of objects, images, information, narratives, and notes on why/how people tell their stories. Her practice is based on found material, and on creating materials when they cannot be found or when they do not exist.

Born in Kuwait in 1974, Younis moved to Amman in 1984. She graduated as an architect from the University of Jordan in 1997. She holds a Masters in Research in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London.

Younis has produced art installations, video works, publications, temporary collectives, publishing projects, and curated exhibitions. Her curatorial projects include Kuwait's first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2013, the nomadic collection of Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence, and "An Index of Tensional and Unintentional Love of Land" at New Museum in the context of "Here and Elsewhere" exhibition organized in 2014. Her work was shown at the Institute du Monde Arabe (2013), 9th Gwangju Biennial (2012), Museum of Modern Arab Art in Doha (2012), New Museum Triennial (2012), 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011), Home Works '5 Beirut (2010), The Jerusalem Show (2009), PhotoCairo 4 (2008) and other places.

Her publication projects include 'Needles to Rockets' (2009), 'Tin Soldiers' (2012), and the non-profit publishing initiative Kayfa-ta, a series of cost-effective Arabic monographs on how to, co-founded with artist Maha Maamoun.She is a recipient of the Bellagio Creative Arts Fellowship, as well as art prizes from Cairo's 17th Youth Salon (2005) and Jordanian Artists Association (2005). Younis co-directed Global Art Forum 8 (2014), and has spoken in conferences and symposiums including Venice Agendas (2013), Berlinale's Forum Expanded (2013–2015), Sweet Sixities Beirut (2013), Global Art Forum 7 in Doha (2013), and ThinkFilm in Berlin (2012). Younis worked as the Artistic Director (2009–10), Acting Director (2008–09) and Assistant Director (2006–08) of Darat al Funun – The Khalid Shoman Foundation in Amman. She also curated film programs for the three editions of Arab Shorts – Independent Arab Film Festival (2009–2011) organized by Goethe Institut Cairo, and is on the advisory board of Berlinale's Forum Expanded.

In 2013, for Kuwait's first national pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, Ala Younis curated "National Works". The show disassembled symbols of grandeur in paused/post glorious times, in an attempt to re-interpret Kuwait's modernization project, while the exhibition's publication explored the emotional and theoretical contexts of works at a time when national identity was not questioned, and when modernist projects, cultural or contractual, were national works. ""The sleeper hit of the summer among the pavilions from this part of the world is Kuwait's pavilion, nimbly curated by Ala Younis. It features a curious installation delving into the heart-stopping history of Sami Mohammad's statues, alongside a ruminative, achingly lonely series of photographs mounted on light boxes by the artist Tarek al-Ghoussein. Younis' sensitive excavation of Mohammad's work allows for some searching self criticality on nationalism and modernity from within the pavilion itself. Ghoussein's "K-Files" represent a seamless and gorgeous continuation of his staged self-portraiture series, working in a mode he calls performance photography."

This show followed her curated "Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence (MoMRtA)" which premiered at Museum of Modern Art in Kuwait and Museum of Modern in 2012. Initiated and produced by MinRASY Projects, the museum is a nomadic collection of commissioned objects that respond to the absence of Palestinians and their history from Kuwait, each object of which is an impossibility or exaggeration. The show premiered at Kuwait's Museum of Modern Art in May 2012.

Her other curatorial projects include:
– "An Index of Tensional and Unintentional Love of Land" exhibition set within "Here and Elsewhere" exhibition at New Museum in New York, 2014
– "This land first speaks to you in signs", exhibition of archival materials and some films from the collection of Cimatheque, Cairo and Berlin, 2015
– "The closest I've ever come to a scientific experiment", at the project space of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, 2014 – "Covering One's Back", a photography exhibition co-curated with Maha Maamoun, Gezira Art Center, Cairo, 2013
– "The Crowd Behind Us", presented at three venues within the Image Festival in Amman, 2012
– "Momentarily Learning from Mega-Events" at Makan art space, Amman, 2011
– "Outre mesure et programmes radio" at La Galeriem Noisy-Le-Sec, Paris, 2011
– "Out of Place", co-curated with Kasia Redzisz for Tate Modern and Darat al Funun's collaboration project, presented at both institutions in 2011.

Her projects begin with found objects and images that might initially seem odd or intriguing, for instance Nefertiti (2008) is an installation of video and defunct sewing machines (Nefertiti) 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. The manufacture of Nefertiti was discontinued in the 1980s, due to various flaws in the design. "For Younis, its manufacture was a 'feminist project' that, although it confined women to the domestic space, also, 'aimed at empowering Egyptian housewives, since it gave them a chance to earn money while their husbands were away fighting'.Yet once the old, elegant, curvaceous Nefertiti was retired, the market was flooded with aesthetically inferior Western machines. The Nefertiti became a focus for nostalgia, and this video explores people's attachment to their old sewing machines."

Her 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" (2010–2) which is made of text and image portraits of contemporary (in)formal Middle Eastern soldiers, and the virtual and alternative spaces they practice their version of militarism in. "Tin Soldiers" is also an installation of 12,265 metal figurines depicting nine armies of the Middle East. The project was produced and shown at HomeWorks 5 in Beirut (2010) and at the Istanbul Biennial (2011). The publication version was also installed as an exhibition at the New Museum Triennial and at the Gwangju Biennial, both took place in 2012.

"UAR" (2014) is a series, of drawings and found objects, that studies the stories and mechanisms that produced Gamal Abdel Nasser's historical figure in the time of the United Arab Republic (1958–1971). The project starts from a photograph of Nasser looking onto an enthusiastic and proud Arab crowd during the signing of a sovereign union agreement between Egypt and Syria in 1958.

Oraib Toukan and Ala Younis collaborate on exploring film footage, discarded by the former Soviet Friendship Society in Amman. They both "developed a peculiar archeology of research that looks at early Palestinian film production, technocratic Soviet friendships, cine clubs, and Russian language films in Amman." Their 3-minute film from this research, titled "From the impossibility of one page being like the other", was broadcast on Channel 4 (UK) at New York Film Festival in 2014.

Her project "Plan for Greater Baghdad" was selected for "All the World's Futures" curated by Okwui Enwezor for the 56th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, and show in Arsenale in 2015. Produced in two and three-dimensional prints, "Plan for Greater Baghdad" traces the stories and links around Saddam Hussein Gymnasium in Baghdad that was designed by Le Corbusier. Activated by a set of 35mm slides taken by architect Rifat Chadirji in 1982, the project reproduces documents that relate to monuments, architects, governments, and the shifts and tensions between ideals and ideologies. The project borrows its title from Frank Lloyd Wright's proposal for a cultural center and an Opera House in Baghdad. His "Plan for Greater Baghdad" was a result of his visit to Baghdad in 1957, yet it was never built.

Younis received the 2nd prize at the 17th Youth Salon, Painting for Non Egyptians, in Cairo (2005); and the 3rd Prize at the Annual Exhibition of Jordanian Artists Association in Amman (2005). In 2012 she was selected by Christine Tohme as one of ArtReview's 'Future Greats 2012'.

2015: -All the World's Futures, 56th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Okwui Enwezor, Venice

2014: – New York Film Festival, New York – Here and Elsewhere, exhibition curated by Massimiliano Gioni and team, New Museum, New York. Participation took the form of a curated exhibition at the 5th floor titled "An Index of Tensional and Unintentional Love of Land" – Multitude, Sesc Pompeia, São Paulo – Tea with Nefertiti, Staatliches Museum Ägyptischer Kunst, Munich – UAR, solo exhibition at Gypsum Gallery, Cairo – Meeting Points 7, Ten thousand wiles and a hundred thousand tricks, Cairo, Hong Kong, Beirut, Antwerp and Zaghreb

2013: – Tea with Nefertiti, IVAM Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha – 59th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Lichtburg Filmpalast, Oberhausen

2012: – ROUNDTABLE, 9th Gwangju Biennial, curated by Nancy Adajania – The Ungovernables, exhibition curated by Eunjie Joo, New Museum Triennial, New York – A Gathering, curated by Maria-Thalia Carras and Olga Hatzidaki, Athens – London Palestine Film Festival, London

2011: – Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Jens Hoffman, Istanbul

2010: – Home Works 5’, forum and exhibition curated by Christine Tohme, Beirut Art Center, Beirut – Solo exhibition at Delfina Foundation, London

2009: Solo exhibition at Darat al Funun, Amman

2008: – PhotoCairo 4: The Long Shortcut, curated by Aleya Hamza and Edit Molnar, Hungarian Cultural Center, Cairo – The Third International Biennale for the Artist's Book 2008, Bibliotheca Alexandrina

Ala Younis published "Needles to Rockets" with Motaz Attalla in 2009. The publication collects personal responses to questions that emerge around the place of consumer products in the lives of people and in society at large in Egypt. The people's answers illustrate how objects become iconic and acquire personas, and they tell some of the myths that surround them. The publication is named after Gamal Abdel Nasser's famous slogan of industrial promise.

Her "Tin Soldiers" publication project, released in 2012, explores persistent realities of formal and informal fighters in the Middle East. The 280-page book collects stories that illustrate the fragility of individuals against militarism, notions of nationalism, and ideological agency. The contributors to this Arabic/English publication include Doa Aly, Francis Alys, Motaz Attalla, Fouad Elkoury, Cevdet Erek, Ahmed Hefnawy, Maha Maamoun, Abdul Hay Mosallam, Kamal Mufti, Nicolas Paris, Rita Ponce de Leon, Imran Qureshi, Rayyane Tabet, Oraib Toukan, Mario Cuesta Hernando, Faisal Darraj, Rasha Salti, M. Sadek, and Adania Shibli.

In 2012, Ala Younis co-founded the non-profit publishing project Kayfa ta (how to) with Maha Maamoun. The independent publishing project produced "How to Disappear" (2013), authored by Egyptian writer Haytham El-Wardany, in Arabic and English. The second monograph was the Arabic version of "SSS – How to imitate the sound of the shore using two hands a carpet" (2014), authored by Turkish artist Cevdet Erek in 2007. Other editions in the series are "How to Know What’s Really Happening" (2016) by Francis McKee, "How to Mend: Motherhood and its Ghosts" (2017) by Iman Mersal, and "How to spell the fight" (2018) by Natascha Sadr Hagigian.

She wrote text pieces for: – The Struggle Is Not Over Yet An Archive in Relation (2018), published by Archive Books and A Oficina, CIPRL, Berlin.– Supercommunity, Diabolical Togetherness Beyond Contemporary Art [7] (2017), by e-flux, edited by Julieta Aranda, Anton Vidokle, and Brian Kuan Wood, published by Verso. – Future Imperfect: Contemporary Art Practices and Cultural Institutions in the Middle East (2016), edited by Anthony Downey, published by Sternberg Press. – If Not For That Wall (2018), edited by Nawa Belal, Ahmed Refaat and Andrea Thal, published by Contemporary Image Collective and Dar Al Maraya. – Sweet Sixties [8] (2014) publication edited by edited by Georg Schöllhammer and Ruben Arevshatyan, and published by Sternberg Press. – We're all for Kuwait, and Kuwait is for us (2014) published by MinRASY PROJECTS. – National Works (2013) exhibition guide for Kuwait's first pavilion at the Venice Biennale. –ArtAsiaPacific, with a text piece titled "A Manual for Revolutionary and Post-Revolutionary Times", published in March/April 2012

Her work appeared in "New Vision: Arab Contemporary Art in the 21st Century", edited by Salwa Mikdadi and Nada Shabbout, and published by Thames and Hudson in 2011, "War and Other (Impossible) Possibilities: Thoughts on Arab History and Contemporary Art" (2012) by Gregory Buchakjian and published by Alarm Editions, Beirut, and "The Ungovernables: The 2012 New Museum Triennial", by Eungie Joo. "Her practices as artist and curator find complementary ground in the production of publications; which offer both a platform for discursive exploration and a point of departure for artistic investigations. Younis’s work poses big questions in response to discrete situations, recalling a larger set of truths evidenced in the world we have inherited."