For Photo Basel, we present a two-person booth showing works by Russian-American artist Anastasia Samoylova (b. 1984) and Yemeni-Bosnian-US multi-media artist Alia Ali (b. 1985). While Anastasia Samoylova explores life on the climatic knife-edge and interrogates notions of environmentalism, consumerism and the picturesque, Alia Ali's new body of work engages in a global dialogue, highlighting patterns of trauma, erasure, and reconstructed identities experienced by numerous nations and diasporic communities across the globe.
Anastasia Samoylova (b. 1984, Moscow; lives in Miami and New York City) moves between observational photography, studio practice and installation. In 2020 she had her first solo museum exhibition of ongoing project FloodZone at USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa. Samoylova was awarded a number of grants for FloodZone, in Europe her work has been presented at the Kunsthaus Wien, as well as Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen, Kunsthalle Mannheim, and Musée des beaux-arts in Le Locle, Switzerland.
Anastasia is a graduate of the Russian State University and received her MFA from Bradley University. She has published with The New Yorker, Smithsonian Magazine, FOAM, Wired, Art Press, and others. Anastasia has lectured as an invited artist at George Eastman Museum, Paris Photo, SVA New York, among others. Her work is in the collections at the Perez Art Museum Miami, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, Art Slant Collection in Paris, and Vontobel Art Collection in Zurich.
Alia Ali // عاليه علي is a Yemeni-Bosnian-US multi-media artist. Having traveled to sixty-seven countries, lived in and between seven, and grown up among five languages, her most comfortable mode of communication is through photography, video, and installation.
Alia Ali is a graduate of Wellesley College and the California Institiute of the Arts. Her work has been featured in the Financial Times, Le Monde, Vogue, and Hyperallergic. Alia has won numerous awards and has exhibited internationally. Her work is in collections at the British Museum, Princeton University, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and numerous international private collections.
Alia Ali lives and works in Los Angeles and Marrakech, and is currently in residency at the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program in Roswell, New Mexico.