My name is Zainab “Zai” Aliyu and I'm a nigerian-american artist and cultural worker living in Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY). My work contextualizes the cybernetic and temporal entanglement embedded within societal dynamics to understand how all sociotechnological systems of control are interconnected, and how we are all materially implicated through time. I draw upon my body as a corporeal archive and site of ancestral memory to craft counter-narratives through sculptures, videos, installations, virtual environments, publications, archives, and social practice. more...
[Group Exhibition]
Spiral Time at Smack Mellon
Jun 2024 — Aug 2024 · Brooklyn, NY
[Fellowship]
Digital/Electronic Arts Fellow at NYSCA/NYFA
Sep 2023 — Sep 2024 · New York, NY
[Work]
Directing design and creating archives for moving image and time-based media
for the
African Film Festival at the Film at Lincoln Center
since Feb 2020 · New York, NY
[Work]
Co-directing
an
experimental school supporting interdisciplinary study in art, code, hardware and critical theory called the School for Poetic Computation
since Jan 2020 · New York, NY
[Review]
Notes from New York: Group Shows, Everywhere on ArtReview
Jul 2024
[Residency]
ACRE
Jun 2024 — Jul 2024 · Steuben, WI
[Residency]
Haystack Mountain School of Crafts
May 2024 — Jun 2024 · Deer Isle, ME
[Solo Exhibition]
A litany for past suns labeled rituals / A star lit any and all possible futures: Part I (Anaglyphs) at Film at Lincoln Center
May 2024 · New York, NY
[Panel]
Contemporary Artists on their Practices, Processes and Purpose at Pocoapoco
May 2024 · New York, NY
[Residency]
Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA)
Apr 2024 · North Adams, MA
[Grant]
Media Arts Assistance Fund (MAAF) from WaveFarm
Apr 2024 · New York, NY
[Artist Talk]
Virginia Commonwealth University
Feb 2024 · Richmond, Virginia
[Class]
Instruments of the Black Gooey Universe at the School for Poetic Computation
Jan 2024 — Mar 2024
[Panel]
Genealogies of Sustenance: Opening Reception and Conversation at Gardiner Museum
Jan 2024 · Toronto, Canada
[Group Exhibition]
Genealogies of Sustenance at Gardiner Museum
Jan 2024 — May 2024 · Toronto, Canada
[Fellowship]
Post-Doctoral Project Fellow
at
ITP/IMA at NYU Tisch School of the Arts
Jan 2024 — May 2024 · New York, NY
[Guest Critic]
Parsons, The New School
Dec 2023 · New York, NY
[Artist Talk]
“Echoes in the Archive: Decoding Colonial Legacies through Sonic and Textual Intervention” at NYU Tisch School of the Arts
Dec 2023 · New York, NY
[Panel]
Moderator*
Software for Artists Day at Pioneer Works
Nov 2023 · Brooklyn, NY
[Publication]
Editor*
Software for Artists Book 3: In Poetic Coalition published by Artbook | D.A.P. & Pioneer Works Press
Nov 2023 · New York, NY · print
[Artist Talk]
Rutgers, Mason Gross School of the Arts
Oct 2023 · New Brunswick, NJ
[Workshop]
Barro, moho, manifiesto: Un otro taller de creación del mundo / Mud, mold, manifest: (An)other world-building workshop at Pocoapoco
Oct 2023 · Oaxaca, Mexico
[Panel]
American Artist, Zainab Aliyu, Taylor Levy and Che-Wei Wang Explore The Black Gooey Universe presented by The Kitchen
Sep 2023 · New York, NY
[Group Exhibition]
Typojanchi: The International Typography Biennale at Culture Station Seoul
Sep 2023 — Oct 2023 · Seoul, Korea
[Residency]
Pocoapoco
Sep 2023 — Oct 2023 · Oaxaca, Mexico
[Group Exhibition]
Electronic Café for Poetic Computation at Recess Arts
Jul 2023 — Aug 2023 · Brooklyn, NY
[Fellowship]
Processing Foundation
Jun 2023 — Sep 2023 · New York, NY
[Residency]
Session Artist Residency at Recess Arts
Jun 2023 — Aug 2023 · Brooklyn, NY
[Publication]
From the Sasha into the Zamani: Death as a Moment of Radical Continuity published by Logic(s) Magazine
May 2023 · internet · print
[Solo Exhibition]
From red dust to Black clay at Film at Lincoln Center
May 2023 · New York, NY
[Lecture-performance]
“A morte como momento de continuidade radical / Death as a Moment of Radical Continuity” at Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research
Apr 2023 · São Paulo, Brazil
[Residency]
Conscientizações Críticas Tecnológicas (Technologies of Critical Conscientization) at the Center for Arts, Design, and Social Research
Apr 2023 — May 2023 · São Paulo, Brazil
[Artist Talk]
p5.js Community Salon at NYU Tisch School of the Arts
Mar 2023 · New York, NY
[Residency]
Aktuelle Architektur der KulturImages (AADK Spain)
Mar 2023 · Murcia, Spain
[Group Exhibition]
Linguagem Manual / Manual Language at Buinho Institute
Feb 2023 · Messejana, Portugal
[Residency]
Buinho Institute
Feb 2023 · Messejana, Portugal
[Screening]
"google my memories" at Microscope Gallery
Nov 2022 · New York, NY
[Residency]
Advisor
for the
L.A.B. Residency at The Kitchen
Nov 2022 — Sep 2023 · New York, NY
[Feature]
How a new guard of creatives is changing the way we engage with data on Friend of Friends
Oct 2022
[Feature]
Reimagining Black Futures with Black Beyond on Cult Classic Mag
Sep 2022
[Solo Exhibition]
freedom is a durational practice at the Film at Lincoln Center
May 2022 · New York, NY
[Artist Talk]
p5.js Access Day
May 2022 · internet
[Class]
Dark Matters: On Blackness, Surveillance and the Whiteness of the Screen at the School for Poetic Computation
Mar 2022 — May 2022 · internet
[Group Exhibition]
Assembly, Alchemy, Ascension at Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery
Feb 2022 — Mar 2022 · New York, NY
[Artist Talk]
WordHack at Babycastles
Feb 2022 · internet
[Fellowship]
Fellow
at the
Future Imagination Collaboratory at NYU Tisch School of the Arts
Jan 2022 — Jun 2023 · New York, NY
[Feature]
Meet black beyond, the collective centring Black femmes in the world of digital art and design on It’s Nice That
Nov 2021
[Panel]
AncestryandMe: DNA Processing Kit on Montez Press Radio
Nov 2021 · internet
[Lecture-performance]
"Death as a Moment of Radical Continuity"
during
Digital Networks, Aesthetics and Black Death at Black Portraitures: Absent/ed Presence
Oct 2021 · Toronto, Canada
[Program]
COCOON at the School for Poetic Computation
Jul 2021 — Aug 2021 · New York, NY
[Class]
AncestryandMe: On critical approaches to DNA analysis and biometric surveillance at the School for Poetic Computation
Jul 2021 — Aug 2021 · internet
[Group Exhibition]
Black Beyond: Origins
Jun 2021 — Nov 2021 · internet
[Commission]
Conceptual consultation
for
"Shaper of God" commissioned by Kadist
Apr 2021 · internet
[Lecture-performance]
"Death as a Moment of Radical Continuity”
during
Interweaving Poetic Code at CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile)
Apr 2021 · Hong Kong, China
[Group Exhibition]
Wheaton Biennial: final_final_FINAL at the Beard and Weil Galleries
Mar 2021 — May 2021 · Norton, MA
[Feature]
Code as Creative Medium: A Handbook for Computational Art and Design published by The MIT Press
Feb 2021 · print
[Panel]
Public reading
of the
Dictionary of Dark Matters on Montez Press Radio
Jan 2021 · New York, NY
[Publication]
“Limitlessness and Limitations: Defining Dark Matters”
for
Are.na Annual: On Tending published by Are.na
Dec 2020 · internet · print
[Guest Critic]
Parsons, The New School
May 2020 · New York, NY
[Class]
Dark Matters: On Blackness, Surveillance and the Whiteness of the ScreenSchool for Poetic Computation
May 2020 — Jul 2020 · internet
[Workshop]
Dark Spirals: Schematics for Collective Sense-Making, Learning and Dreaming (001: FESTAC'77) at the The Africa Center
Feb 2020 · New York, NY
[Group Exhibition]
Curator*
Seven Years of Poetic Computation (Code and Power) at the Westbeth Gallery
Jan 2020 · New York, NY
[Publication]
“Imaginary Numbers: On Unjust Equations and the Negation of Blackness”
distributed by
Tiny Tech Zines presented at NAVEL
Aug 2019 · Los Angeles, CA · print
꩜ full cv available upon request
Lenticular Temporalities: 2949596 / ∞. Installation view at Smack Mellon. Photo by Etienne Frossard.
Lenticular Temporalities: 2949596 / ∞ ["Death as a moment of radical continuity II”]. Installation view at Smack Mellon. Photo by Etienne Frossard.
Lenticular Temporalities: 2949596 / ∞. Installation view at Smack Mellon. Photo by Etienne Frossard.
Lenticular Temporalities: Negotiating Obfuscation is a web experiment seeks to locate the power in physically negotiating obfuscation. Published on The HTML Review.
foregrounding an alternate imaginary of entangled time Lenticular Temporalities
Installation view at Film at Lincoln Center.
A series of fabric prints leverage an anaglyph effect to create layered meaning in the images and text presented, which can be perceived through red and cyan viewers offered to visitors.
A series of fabric prints leverage an anaglyph effect to create layered meaning in the images and text presented, which can be perceived through red and cyan viewers offered to visitors.
Just as stereoscopic vision merges two slightly different images to create depth perception, the work invites viewers to perceive history through a multidimensional lens rooted in shared experiences of joy, resilience, struggle and the meaningful practices that shape familial narratives over time.
Accompanying the images, speculative captions float alongside—sometimes redacting—machine-generated captions, piecing together fragments of memory in a way that speaks to Saidiya Hartman’s practice of “critical fabulation” and Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ evocation of that which is “ancestrally co-written.”
Forthcoming series of stereograph cards that can be perceived with a stereograph viewer.
The title, A litany for past suns labeled rituals / A star lit any and all possible futures, is a bilateral anagram where all the letters of the first part make up the letters of the second part. It’s inspired by Nikki Giovanni’s “A Litany for Peppe” (1970) and Audre Lorde’s “A Litany for Survival” (1978), two poems written years apart, yet converging thematically through time. As the title suggests, the piece is structured as a litany, a repetitive and rhythmic form often used in ceremonial settings. In this context, my litany serves as a call to action for my communities to alchemize our shared histories towards shared futurities.
forging connections across temporal, geographical and ancestral boundaries A litany for past suns labeled rituals / A star lit any any all possible futures
installation view at gardiner museum. video installation includes a sound shower speaker system in the form of an inverted vessel suspended from the ceiling, creating a spatial embrace that invites viewers to be 'held' within an intimate cocoon of sound and story. this arrangement, designed to envelop viewers within an invisible sanctuary, is not just a functional element but also a metaphorical extension of the artwork's theme.
installation view at gardiner museum.
selected film stills.
original drawings from filmmakers working across african diasporic cinema, which were then translated into digitized forms.
commission from african film festival at film at lincoln center, featuring artifacts and excerpts from piece.
project website can be visited here.
imagining generative possibilities for holding and being beholden to each other From red dust to Black clay
The visual language of the postcards references the Freedom Quilts of the Underground Railroad that were embedded with code to signal refuge, and pulled in symbols inspired by various African crafts such as àdìrę dying (Yorùbá), adinkra stamps (Asante), nkisi charms (Congo), and kuba patterns (Congo).
Reference: Freedom Quilts of the Underground Railroad.
Reference: “Hidden in Plain View” (Tobin, Dobard, Wahlman)
“Pretty Good Privacy Postcards” is envisioned as a network of installations implicating each country involved in the Scramble for Africa —Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom—, pointing to the legacy of resistance as a global and interconnected effort, and underlining the ways communities refigure structures of oppression to safely prosper.
Reference: Coat of arms of André Vidal de Negreiros and inscription of the foundation of the chapel of Nazare.
The first of these sculptures, “Grande Coragem (it takes great courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it)” (2023) refigures its colonial precedent and situates the Bailundo Revolt by the Ovimbundu Kingdom (present-day Angola) against the Portuguese Empire within this global struggle. 80cm x 60cm x 3cm. wood, hand painted arabic azulejo ceramic tiles, riso-printed postcards.
Installation view at Buinho (Messejana, Portugal).
exploring privacy as intimacy through print ephemera, refigured colonial sculptures, and a web-based decryption tool Pretty Good Privacy Postcards
Installation view at the School for Poetic Computation.
I am captivated by the conceptual and aesthetic symmetry of two seemingly unrelated objects — core rope memory from early software computing and the opele divination chain from my Nigerian lineage — and their distinct relationships to memory and erasure. During the pioneering of the Apollo spacecraft mission, women workers (the first being an African American lab technician named Hilda G. Carpenter) manually wove memory into computer systems, based on translating software programmed by MIT engineers. I identify with these women whose contributions, like those of my ancestors, have been relegated and untold.
Installation view at the School for Poetic Computation.
Installation view at the School for Poetic Computation.
Written piece to accompany installation. Published in Logic(s) Magazine (May 2023).
interrogating the cultural value systems that are encoded into the objects that we build Death as a Moment of Radical Continuity
Install View at the Film at Lincoln Center.
Excerpt from the intro that plays on the hourly reset.
traversing borders to fabricate an infinite, pan-African chorus of shared somatic vibrations Freedom is a Durational Practice
Installation view at Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery.
Installation view at Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery.
Still from piece.
challenging established relationships between reader, text, and authorship Affirmations for my Existence
stills from video.
presentation view for black beyond: origins.
situating technology within a diasporic imaginary to explore the ways in which machines can mediate the affects of displacement, human mobility and (re)settlement Google My Memories
cover of book.
selected spreads.
imagining what kinds of learning and unlearning we can practice together when we defy existing models for institution-building In Poetic Coalition
photo of the cover of the book.
full cover spread.
excerpt from table of contents.
list of contributors. For transparency, every voice within the dictionary is uniquely represented with the contributor's preference in typography. By archiving our histories and inserting our direct experiences into the critical theories we learned, we were looking inwardly and actively engaging with the way we move through the world.
It feels increasingly necessary, helping us to ask not only about the technologies, processes and policies that govern civil liberties, but also about whose bodies and freedoms are most controlled and policed.
a public reading of our dictionary was published by montez press radio (jan 2021 · new york, ny).
self-publishing an assemblage of knowledge on surveillance, racial capitalism and technology, established within mutual histories Dictionary of Dark Matters
i’m one of the seven co-directors of the school, currently focusing on publishing, programming, archives and special projects.
SFPC's former space at the Westbeth Artists Community located in New York City's West Village, where we studied within the computational and historical lineage of Bell Labs which occupied that space many years before. The four column grid of our website is inspired by those four prominent floor to ceiling windows.
co-organizer for COCOON an experimental summer curriculum exploring the history and poetics of math, critical approaches to biometric surveillance, the craft of reading and writing, being loving and loved online and the augmenting of reality (Jul 2021 — Aug 2021).
Organizer and teacher, with American Artist, for Dark Matters, a critical theory of technology course that considers the racialized history of surveillance and the positioning of white as neutral within interfaces as forms of violence enacted through high technology. (May 2020 — Jul 2020, Mar 2022 — May 2022).
Organizer and teacher, with American Artist, for AncestryandMe, a class focused on critical approaches to dna analysis and biometric surveillance (Jul 2021 — Aug 2021).
Participants from Dark Matters 2020.
Co-organizer of Seven Years of Poetic Computation. I curated the space, "Code and Power," which describes the way in which the technology of societal systems frequently reinforce economic and social inequalities, risking further marginalization of vulnerable communities. Exhibiting artists — who examined issues of access, automation, inclusion and machine bias — included American Artist, Andrew Badr, Bomani Oseni McClendon, Josh Michaels, Sean Catangui, Shannon Finnegan and Yeseul Song. (Jan 2020)
Installation view.
Co-organizer (with Nabil Hassein) of "Critical Theory Retrospective": A convening around the relevance of critical theory of technology to broader debates about inclusion, exclusion and machine bias; the ecological impact of computation; cultural expressions of and through computation; general social/political questions of who controls computation and to what ends, and how that might be different in the future than it is now. (Jan 2020)
Co-organizer (with Nabil Hassein) of "Math as a Religious Experience": on model and metaphor; music and visual art; physics and divination; the infinitely large, the infinitely small, and what it means to live our values in the world. (Jan 2020)
supporting interdisciplinary study in art, code, hardware and critical theory School for Poetic Computation
This zine is a collective project of the critical theory of technology class, Dark Matters: Blackness, Surveillance, and the Whiteness of the Screen. Sharing a namesake with Simone Browne’s Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness, this class sought accountability to our mutual histories, taking a critical focus on identity, visibility, opacity, obfuscation, and automation, and how one reckons with the contention of their own body in public and in private. Together we questioned how to remain critical of legacy power structures that are embedded in the devices we interface with daily.
cover of zine.
selected excerpt of zine.
selected excerpt of zine.
questioning the memorabilia of capitalist labor that is reminiscent of the technologies that dictate the conditions of our world Dark Matters Zine
audio cover, published by montez press radio.
learning about ancestral history within the context of biometric surveillance/DNA tracing technology AncestryandMe
From March 27th to May 1st, 2020, we held ~100 public live-streamed programs for over 5,000 participants from around the world, shared mutual aid resources, launched two global 24 hour parties, as well as sacred space to mourn with vigils. Funds received were used to supplement lost income within our community due to the pandemic.
The CLOUD9 Memorial Garden is a space for collective remembrance with care, gentleness and respect. Pandemic times limit how we can gather to mourn and remember. During periods of mass loss and isolation, creating intentional spaces to enact and celebrate collective memory is vital.
view of website.
view of website.
sharing care, strategies, wisdom, sweetness, resources, and love to support everyone affected by the coronavirus pandemic Cloud9
folded scan of publication.
scan of front of publication.
scan of back of publication.
responding urgently against ongoing state violence, in the form of a toolkit on digital self-defense, anti-surveillance and direct action care Revolution & Us
selected spreads from aff's publication, "notes from home: recurring dreams & women's voices" (2021).
website design, website development and identity design (2020).
selected spreads from aff's publication, "streaming rivers: the past into the present" (2020).
foregrounding film as a conduit for diaspora reconnection with radical potential African Film Festival
collection logo.
full collection.
photo of runway show.
look 1 from collection.
look 2 from collection.
look 3 from collection.
look 4 from collection.
look 5 from collection.
look 6 from collection.
look 7 from collection.
look 8 from collection.
look 9 from collection.
look 10 from collection.
unpacking the notion of creeping normality to reflect upon perennial social and environmental degradation Erode
identity translation to mobile.
Elements of the website served as a foundation for much of the identity system. The technique of dynamically compressing type and image was developed for the website and then adapted to print and motion design pieces.
the show's program.
variations of identity translation to print.
show tickets.
custom typefaces used throughout the show's identity, which were designed with the intent of being dramatically stretched and scaled.
critiquing the corrosive cycle of consumption and rejecting the affordances of friction-free exchange Vestige
installation view.
installation view.
installation view.
installation view.
installation view.
installation view.
installation view.
installation view.
installation view.
installation view.
installation view.
installation view.
installation view.
leveraging spatial storytelling to examine the effects of systemic loss on the identity of a community Hazelwood Memorial
While Goffman didn't live to see the prevalence of digital communication, much of his analyses of face-to-face interactions can be applied in virtual contexts through the lens of the online disinhibition effect, which describes the loosening of social restrictions when communicating on digital platforms. Each piece of the six-part series focuses on a digital social platform and portrays the implications of computer-aided affordances (e.g. default whiteness, surveillance, identity tourism, identity curation, catfishing, identity theft, cyber bullying, trolling) in order to build upon Goffman's original approach.
selected spreads.
analyzing notions of identity and presentation of self in physical realms and virtual contexts Dog Cat Fish