Portable Sanctuaries: 3000 years ago/Now/3000 years forward, Alia Ali

Artist Alia Ali brings together three sculptural works that reimagine garments and talismanic objects as architectures of protection. Drawing on textile traditions, ancestral knowledge and material histories spanning Yemen, Anatolia and the Indian Ocean, the works explore the relationship between the body, language, shelter and belonging. 

Inscribed with Sabyani, a futuristic script invented by the artist, and embellished with minerals, prayer beads and protective materials, each work becomes a vessel for memory and possibility. For Ali, ‘they propose a world in which geography and linear time dissolve, where ancestors and descendants coexist, and where protection extends beyond the physical body into imagined futures.’