Taqwa B. Ali is an inter- and multidisciplinary artist from Sudan, currently living and studying in Maastricht. She is currently finishing a bachelor in Interdisciplinary Arts and working on her graduation project, “Residue of the Liminal Space” which is an installation and performance of an ethnographic research of the Sudanese diaspora in the Netherlands, though the work of clay. (Ali, 2023)
This project reflects on the nature of identities being between spaces, as Sudanese people living abroad, and thus inevitably affected by gaps and transitional phases.
Taqwa is also doing an art residency in critical fashion with a group based in Ghana that assess the impact of second hand fashion in the global south.
Her artistic practice varies between multiple disciplines but aims to be experimental and derives from artistic research. She described her motivation coming from the feeling of being completely lost and not being able to put words on these sensation, thus producing artistic content to share it. She stated that she does not think that it is more powerful than other forms of activism but that there are definitely a lot of benefits to bring creativity in the process of sharing a message. People can be more receptive to this type of communication and she indicated that it could be the best way to approach difficult topics, from her perspective.
Taqwa described the concept of artistic activism in a few different manners; first she mentioned how loud and mean traditional activism can be, and that artistic activism offers the possibility to engage a different approach and how it gives the possibility to initiate in multiple ways to take a stance, political for example, beyond your artistic practice.
Moreover, Taqwa said that she does not really have the choice to be politically engaged as she carries a heavy background; a post-colonial Sudanese identity. This component of her identity influences her artwork and she cannot detach from it.
Her political engagement lays in the foundation of her artwork in a way that cannot be obvious to everyone. In that respect, she expects audiences to feel the experience by taking a deeper look at the artwork.
Generally speaking, she seeks for dialogues, conversations and exchanges with their audience. She wants people to talk about their feelings regarding her artwork and have feedback on what sorts of emotions they might have experienced over the course of the discovery.
