Diana Ali was born in Rusholme, Manchester to Bengali parents and is now based in Nottingham, UK. She actively works nationally and internationally taking her practice to different cities and spaces. Diana has a BA (Hons) Fine Art from Nottingham Trent University and a Masters in Contemporary Fine Art Curating/ Practice from Sheffield Hallam University. She is also a fellow in Higher Edcuation (HFEA Status).
Her practice involves fictional writing, drawing, installation, a play on language and text and direct animation. She is interested in correspondence, networking, connectivity, collaboration and the met and un-met through curating as an extended art practice and research. She explores lines of cultural divides and brings fragments of different cultures in one space, usually in un-white cube galleries.
As a Visual Artist, she has exhibited regionally, nationally at the TINAG festival, London and Site Gallery, Sheffield and solo at the Airspace Gallery, Hanley. Her international exhibitions include The Library Artspace, Victoria, Australia, The Crafts Fair in San Francisco, The Roaming Biennial in Tehran and the Other Asia’s exhibition ‘ReDo Pakistan’ in Karachi, Pakistan and has been featured in The Disarmory Newspaper in New York.
To date she has independently curated fourteen shows. National projects include ‘Up & Coming’ at the CUC in Liverpool, an event showcasing 60 emerging national and international artists, ‘Subversive Correspondence’ featuring fifty artists in London and Bristol and ‘Dialogues: A Fake Romance?’ in Swansea with thirty artists. She has also curated the ‘Defamiliarization’ touring exhibition in London and Sheffield where her work explored artists’ responses from the local to the global. Internationally, she has curated in countries with cultural divides; ‘A State of Un-Play’ at Atelier 35 in Romania and ‘Engagement and Entrapment’ in Israel/Palestine, Cyprus and South Korea.
In addition to being a visual artist and curator, she is also a lecturer, freelance workshop leader, an arts educator and creative mentor. She has lectured at Huanghui University in China and in Italy. She is currently leading the Pre-Degree Foundation at Grantham College and the Open College of Arts tutoring degree students and where she has written the Level 6 course for Professional Practice.
She is currently working with promoting the arts and the importance of creative thinking and making in different sectors outside of art. She has given presentations at the Institute of Mental Health, Nottingham University, Southwark Cathedral for their Black History Month and is involved in a book “Unlocking the Puzzles of Peak Engagement and Performance (PEP®) by Elmira Bakhshalian and Dr Martin Reddington about Art and business.
