ALI CHERRI

Early Life and Education

Ali Cherri was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1976 and grew up during the Lebanese Civil War, an experience that has shaped his sustained engagement with conflict, memory, and the built environment. He received a BA in graphic design from the American University of Beirut in 2000. Cherri moved to the Netherlands in 2005 to complete an MA in performing arts at DasArts (now DAS Theatre) at the Amsterdam University of the Arts, later settling in Paris while maintaining close ties to Beirut. In November 2024, his parents, Mahmoud Naim Cherri and Nadira Hayek, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on their residential building in the Noueiri neighbourhood of Beirut, just hours before a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. In April 2026, together with the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), he filed a civil party complaint with the French War Crimes Unit in Paris, alleging that the bombing constitutes a war crime under French and international humanitarian law.

Ali Cherri Artworks and Style

Ali Cherri works across film, video installation, sculpture in earth and bronze, drawing, and performance, probing the relationship between political violence, archaeological heritage, and the natural environment.

Early works and film practice, 2000s–2010s

Cherri’s early career was rooted in video and multimedia, shaped by the post-war Beirut art scene of the 1990s and 2000s. He began exhibiting internationally in group shows such as In Focus (Tate Modern, 2007), Future Imperfect (Tate Modern, 2013), exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011 and 2017), and But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2016). His film tetralogy — The Disquiet (2013), The Digger (2015), The Dam (2022), and The Watchman (2023) — offers an extended meditation on political landscapes from Lebanon to Cyprus and Sudan, and has received awards at Dubai International Film Festival, CPH:DOX Copenhagen, VideoBrasil, Côté Court Festival, and Cannes (Directors’ Fortnight).

Sculpture and institutional exhibitions, 2020s

From 2020 onward, Cherri expanded his practice into monumental sculpture using earth and mud — what he describes as ‘the primeval matter of our creation stories’. His installation Of Men and Gods and Mud (2022), shown in Cecilia Alemani‘s The Milk of Dreams at the 59th Venice Biennale, earned the Silver Lion, with the jury praising ‘an interdisciplinary and multilayered presentation that takes a meditation on earth, fire, and water from a constructive perspective to a mythical dimension’. Solo exhibitions followed at the National Gallery, London (If you prick us do we not bleed?, 2022), Swiss Institute, New York (Humble and quiet and soothing as mud, 2023), GAMeC, Bergamo (Dreamless Night, 2023), and the Vienna Secession (How I Am Monument, 2024), forming the basis for an expanded survey at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in 2025.

Recent projects and ongoing themes, 2024–26

In 2024, Cherri entered into dialogue with the work of Alberto Giacometti in the exhibition Envisagement at Fondation Giacometti, Paris, exploring representations of the human face through sculpture and archaeological artefacts. In 2024–25, his major institutional project How I Am Monument was presented at Secession, Vienna, and subsequently at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, as his first large-scale survey in the United Kingdom.

In 2025 he presented Les Veilleurs at Musée d’art contemporain de Marseille, extending his interest in watchfulness, ruins, and nocturnal landscapes. In 2026, his first solo exhibition at Almine Rech in New York, Last Watch Before Dawn, debuts the new film The Sentinel (2026) alongside sculptures and works on paper, while forthcoming solo exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and Pray, Lips of Clay at WIELS, Brussels (5 September 2026–4 January 2027), further consolidate his presence within European institutions. Cherri is also scheduled to participate in the Kyiv Biennial and the group exhibition Near East, Far West at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, in 2026.

Awards and honours of Ali Cherri

• 2025 – Press Award, Best Film, Côté Court Festival, for The Watchman
• 2022 – Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant, 59th Venice Biennale
• 2022 – National Gallery Artist in Residence, London
• 2015 – New Vision Award, CPH:DOX Copenhagen, for The Digger

Exhibitions of Ali Cherri

Ali Cherri has exhibited at institutions, biennales, film festivals, and contemporary art galleries across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas. The artist’s first major UK institutional presentation, How I Am Monument, opened at Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, on 12 April 2025 and ran until 12 October 2025. Co-commissioned with the Vienna Secession, the exhibition brought together film, sculpture in earth and bronze, and large-scale installation to trace the artist’s longstanding investigation into the ways political power shapes landscapes, ruins, and the human body.

Ali Cherri’s first solo exhibition at Almine Rech, New York, Last Watch Before Dawn, opened in 2026, in Tribeca, debuting the new film The Sentinel (2026) alongside a group of sculptures and works on paper; Ocula named it among the top ten exhibitions to see worldwide in February 2026.

Later in 2026, Cherri will present a solo exhibition at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, one of France’s foremost contemporary art institutions, further consolidating his prominence in the French capital where he has been based since the mid-2000s. In September 2026, WIELS Centre d’Art Contemporain, Brussels, will open Pray, Lips of Clay, described as the first exhibition to bring together several of Cherri’s major bodies of work in a single presentation, running through 4 January 2027. He is also included in the Kyiv Biennial and the group exhibition Near East, Far West at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, both scheduled for 2026.

Select solo exhibitions

• 2026 – Palais de Tokyo, Paris (upcoming); WIELS, Brussels (upcoming); Almine Rech, New York (upcoming)
• 2025 – How I Am Monument, Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead
• 2025 – Les Veilleurs, Musée d’art contemporain de Marseille
• 2024 – Envisagement, Fondation Giacometti, Paris
• 2024 – How I Am Monument, Secession, Vienna
• 2023 – Dreamless Night, GAMeC, Bergamo
• 2023 – Humble and quiet and soothing as mud, Swiss Institute, New York
• 2022 – If you prick us do we not bleed?, The National Gallery, London

Select group exhibitions

• 2026 – Kyiv Biennial (upcoming); Near East, Far West, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (upcoming)
• 2025 – Corps et Âmes, Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris
• 2023 – 15th Sharjah Biennial; 5th Kochi-Muziris Biennale
• 2022 – The Milk of Dreams, 59th Venice Biennale
• 2020 – Minds Rising, Spirits Tuning, 13th Gwangju Biennale
• 2018 – Statues Also Die, Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Museo Egizio, Turin
• 2016 – But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
• 2007 – Lebanese Pavilion, Venice Biennale

Collections

Ali Cherri’s work is held in the following public collections:

• Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
• Musée national d’art moderne / Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
• British Museum, London
• Collection Pinault, Paris and Venice
• Museo Egizio, Turin
• National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul
• MACBA, Barcelona
• Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht
• Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha

Website, Instagram, and further reading

Ali Cherri has been represented by leading galleries including Almine Rech (Paris, Brussels, London, New York, Shanghai, Monaco) and Galerie Imane Farès, Paris. His website is alicherri.com. View artworks, exhibitions, and further reading about Ali Cherri on Ocula, including the Ocula Magazine conversation Ali Cherri: ‘My work is about finding solidarity’.

Ali Cherri FAQs

Ocula | 2026