Sculpture, paintings and installation elements are reorganised and transformed in an organic manner as part of the artistic process. Alia primarily uses hand-treated steel and hand-manipulated fabric to depict signifiers of her past through a contemporary lens.
Alia’s work explores power dynamics that echo into personal relationships, with a focus on the history of Southwest Asian and North African region power structures. Themes of forced migration, exile and identity also converge in her works.
She has recently been selected as part of New Contemporaries 2026, with an exhibition and live performance work in South London Gallery and the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art. Alia was also recently given a Henry Moore Foundation Winter Grant 2025 award to produce a new public sculpture as part of a project named FORGED which will go on display as part of a community garden and micro-farm in Middlesbrough. Other exhibitions include: ḵawwāfa / خَوَّافَة at 36 Gallery for her first solo exhibition in 2025 and as part of Middlesbrough Art Week 2024. Alia has previously been awarded the Hatton Prize for outstanding ambition in the installation of the Newcastle University MFA Graduate show, Pipelines, and the Bartlett Award for sustainability by Newcastle University’s School of Fine Art.
