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.
After starting her practice as a self-taught photographer, Eman Ali decided to pursue her artistic education in London with a BA in Graphic Design at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (2008) then with an MA in Photography from the Royal College of Art (2017). Eman Ali has been shortlisted for numerous prestigious photography prizes including the Foam Paul Huf Award (2013), European Photo Award (2016) and Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize (2018). In 2020, she was a Single Image winner at the British Journal of Photography Female in Focus Awards. Her previous clients include Ffotogallery Wales, BMW, Adidas, and The Standard Hotel, among others, and her work has been exhibited in fairs and exhibitions in Africa, Asia and Europe.