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.

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."

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