Eman Ali is an Omani-Bahraini visual artist working across photography, AI, sculpture, text, installation, and sound. Based between Bahrain, Oman, and Kenya, her practice investigates the shifting relationships between visibility and erasure, intimacy and distance, history and the present.
Ali’s work examines how memory, gender, and power shape visual and cultural narratives over time. Through research and image-making, she challenges systems of representation, navigating the space between documentation and speculation. Longing - whether for connection, belonging, or lost histories - runs through her work, shaping her engagement with both personal and collective memory.
Ali’s practice resists fixed conclusions, moving fluidly between reality and fiction, record and imagination. Positioned as both an inquiry and a site of reinvention, her work disrupts dominant narratives, inviting a reconsideration of the systems that define what is seen, remembered, and ultimately forgotten.
Ali’s practice resists fixed conclusions, moving fluidly between reality and fiction, record and imagination. Positioned as both an inquiry and a site of reinvention, her work disrupts dominant narratives, inviting a reconsideration of the systems that define what is seen, remembered, and ultimately forgotten.
Over the years, she has been recognized for her work, being shortlisted for prestigious photography awards such as the Foam Paul Huf Award (2013), the European Photo Award (2016), and the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize (2018). More recently, she was nominated for the C/O Berlin Talent Award in 2024 and shortlisted for the PRIX BMW ART MAKERS Award in 2023. In 2020, Eman Ali received recognition as a Single Image winner at the British Journal of Photography's Female in Focus Awards. Her work has been showcased in fairs, biennales, and exhibitions across Africa, Asia, Europe, and America.