Asiya Ali

Main personal blog:// peachices.tumblr.com

[asiya-ali]

Getting started 🖌

[numbiarts]

THE EARTH KNOWS POEMS!!

In partnership with Rich Mix and British Museum Somali Object Journeys!!

SUNDAY 7th AUGUST 2016

Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London E1 6LA

FREE

2pm - 6pm / Workshops

7pm - 10pm / Screening and Performances

Filmic, poetic, musical and inter-generational conversation exploring Somali and East End heritage as sites of resistance that work as places of radical possibilities.

An afternoon of workshops including objects from the British Museum (Somali Object Journeys), narrative making workshop with sound recording, capturing stories around the objects through poetry, drawing and photography.

Get a glimpse of Numbi’s archive materials in this free screening, conversation with architect, urbanist and educator Rashid Ali (RA Projects), and spoken word performances.

Book your FREE places via - https://www.richmix.org.uk/events/film/earth-knows-poems 

Keep reading

[asiya-ali]

👐 🌟 💫 🙏

[jhnlndfoto-blog]

[asiya-ali]

http://sideroom.org/o/?event=screening-of-hip-hop-hijabis

[asiya-ali]

😎

[yoshinorimizutani]

[asiya-ali]

Time is not on my side

I get nervous looking at my inbox

The last two months have been the greatest, and busiest, I have experienced.

I count on my hand all the things involving my time.

I’m currently in my second year of my full-time studies in Fine Art Painting. alongside that I’m also:

working a part-time job,

part of Whitechapel’s youth group forum

And I have now, since the beginning of February been involved in an internship with an amazing non-profits arts space - Numbi Arts - but more on that soon. 

From my internship I have been given the task of a commision, to design a book cover for a Somali author of a 1970 classic story.

It’s been strange yet natural to stretch myself all across these different places and different things, and I’ve not included all the extra-curricular things I go to see and be a apart of. It’s been amazing truly. An abundance of activities. However, despite all the involvement I've given to all these things, I’m still lacking enough hard work from myself, I haven’t even reached a halfway point to what is is needed from me. It’s stressful, to not have fruits from what you do.

I still don’t have nearly enough paintings to showcase and sustain a “body of work”. Not read enough material for the intense essay I had planned. I haven’t been documenting all the amazing events, talks, exhibitions, debates and generalities I’ve seen, so it’s all going to waste. Ain’t been consistently on time for work and am facing a disciplinary. And, if fate has it, the commission I have taken on is frenziedly falling apart, unless I can salvage it in time.

I just wish I could get myself together in time, be organised, be professional and work hard. That boost of energy and motivation I had developed in the weeks after I had been to Amsterdam with my university has deplated.

Although, perhaps it hasn’t gone completely. The fact that I want to work hard is a testament of my determination. It is like my mother was saying to me yesterday morning, refuse to lay down in defeat and be stubborn enough to push through everything - she is right. I have to be everything I want, including the small, hard, unattractive parts I've got to deal with. And, that I am concerned now rather than later in my studies tell me i’m in the right direction.

Time may not be on my side, but many things are.

[asiya-ali]

A perfect half of my heart 🌙✴

[motiya]

things we had been marking off for the future are happening now. the plans we made and dreams we’ve had, everything is being spoken into existence and will continue to do so at an alarming rate. in the present-future these things should be appreciated not rushed past towards the next.

[asiya-ali]

Day 3: Leaving Rotterdam

I haven’t caught up with my life on this place.

I am currently in the Netherlands this week with my university. We came on Tuesday, and are leaving Rotterdam this Friday morning, now heading to Amsterdam.

Its been cool, Rotterdam, good art, strange buildings, streets and roads that are in all directions...

Getting really inspired by being away from home and my life, I want to paint so much right now it aches. Plus talking to the students in the year below who I’ve just met has made me think about my own present position. I’m in the second year of my course, and technically halfway through my degree. Yet I still have so many gaps. i need to make more art, read more books, research, and keep that mouth closed whilst all this is happening. I’m tired of my reputation as the girl whose always talking, it follows me with an air of annoyance.

Anyway, back to this trip...   So yes, its been fun and interesting. Yesterday, after an hour-long train ride we saw Jheronimus Bosche’s exhibition in the little town he was named after. Got some nice things to bring back including a wide denim kimono wrap from Monaki and stroop waffles for my brother.

Ah, and before I forget I wanna talk about an interesting task I have whilst I am here.

Since February I’ve been doing a work placement as part of a course assignment at a really amazing non-profits organization. The founder/leader forwarded me to a man who wants a layout design for a vintage Somali book, and once I told her that I would be in Amsterdam this week she told me that that’s where he is based. So now I plan to meet him so we can talk about what he exactly wants me to design. 

I’ll get back to how it goes later.

And I hope the awkwardness of being around students and tutors goes away soon, because its draining, you know.

~🎨 x

[tagendonovan]

collage experiments 2014

[undesdunkelt-deactivated2015061]

[asiya-ali]

. . . Looking back on these last few months, it's relieving to see that I was able to do so many things with what time I had. It was because of the new phase I entered at the beginning of October; starting a new job, transitioning from my first to second year of fine art painting that I needed to see as much as I could while I can. So I went to alot of events in my own time, group exhibitions in secluded art spaces, talks, circles of discussion. I felt like I could slip out of my routine skin and into that of a familiar more unhindered me, going to these things meant being a stranger and so my voice would be more calmer, my words strung together fluidly. I always go alone, unattached. And in many ways it helps pull me out of my ways of thinking. I always feel I can benefit from an experience - that there is always something to take away, let curl up in my thoughts and turn back to when I need it. . . . writing means a lot to me, it's always interesting to look at a sentence I wrote, to have my thoughts solidified and in words. and I'm quite good at it, so I've been told. But I pull away for some reason that I don't know. It's almost like I am lying to my hands. And because my thoughts, my way of thinking doesn't sound like my writing, and my voice sounds so far away from both of them that I can't even establish what it is I want to put down. But I need to do it, because it connects me to the world that flits about inside. Luckily I bought myself another journal, and I can pick up on that again. Soon. And as far as being organised goes, well, the moment I return to university and receive my grant I'm going to get myself my very first laptop 💻 Hopefully this new year will give me more focus and consistency, we will see Inshalla 🌟

[asiya-ali]

@dayosenergy

[asiya-ali]

'Self portrait', 1970 Happy birthday Jean-Michel Basquait 🌠

[gentlechamomile]

Today the work that needs to be done will be done. I’m open to taking my time, getting started when I’m ready but also ensuring I get started when the time appears. Pretty much, every moment of today will be of value. It will be balanced. There will be no lack or slack. I will breathe. I will complete. I will be at peace. 

[asiya-ali]

🌙 I find that at night time my thoughts become easier to articulate and make sense of. So I like to write poetry when it reaches past midnight, it helps me 🌌🌃 But alas, I have a job that I need to wake up and be at before 8am...