M.F.A. Studio Arts (Performance), School of the Art Institute Chicago
B.F.A. Graphic Design, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, School of Art & Design

• BIS 137 Why Art Matters
• BISIA 219 Interdisciplinary Arts
• BISIA 209 Engaging Visual/Media Arts: The Art of Spoken Word Poetry
• BISIA 330 Arts-in-Practice: Engaging Contemporary Artists
• BIS 375 Contemporary ‘Muslim’ Artists
• BISIA 383 IA Studio Workshop: Movement for Non-Dancers
• BISIA 475/MCS 475 Global Media Lab

I believe the classroom is a fertile environment for leadership skills, collaboration, critical thinking, personal and interpersonal development, and a communication tool to help students tap into a sense of purpose in the larger world. I want students to feel invested in their world and engage with one another, ultimately to understand the stakes of what it means to ask important questions and perhaps even take a critical stance on issues. I frequently encourage my students to consider themselves as artists in my classroom. As artists, their creativity can give rise to a critical consciousness where they become agents of change who can respond and shape the world they live in, instead of merely functioning and adapting to it.

From day one, students in my classes learn the importance of collaboration and shared leadership not only in classroom-based activities, but also through having to effectively negotiate group dynamics and share leadership responsibilities outside of class. Cohort groupings engage in a series of micro-assignments and in-class activities throughout the course, building comraderies, establishing trust, learning communication skills and recognizing strengths and skillsets early on. All of this requires establishing trust in my teaching and amongst one another. I do this by building a sense of community in the class from week one.

I hold myself to a high standard as a teacher, always looking for ways to deepen engagement, creative risk-taking, and joy through rigor. The voices of students fuel my pedagogical growth. From working in conditions of extreme poverty in Phnom Penh to teaching in the privileged classrooms of Northwestern University and Trinity College, I have learned to navigate the challenges of diverse student communities and adapt quickly to emerging needs. This unique intersection of experiences and fieldwork has contributed to my success at the University of Washington Bothell.

Despite the limited resources and lack of the robust infrastructure often associated with art schools, my students have met creative challenges with some of the most remarkable work I have had the privilege to shepherd into the world. I keep their words close as a reminder of how to build on each previous moment.

As one student wrote, “I totally felt inspired. It really helped that all of my peers contributed amazing works, and therefore I wanted to as well. But I also felt inspired to make myself proud, which isn’t something I get in my typical STEM classes necessarily.” I want to create that experience for every student I teach.

Studio Arts (Performance, Interdisciplinary Arts, Multimedia, Dance/Movement, Social Practice, Socially Engaged Arts, Video/Digital Media, Print/Graphic Design, Installation, Textile), Performance & New Media Studies, Contemporary Art, Asian American Studies, American/Ethnic /Cultural Studies, Diaspora/Global Studies, Southeast Asian Studies, Feminist Studies/ Gender, Women, Sexuality Studies

My artworks continue to complicate narratives and push forth transnational hybrid identities as radical modes of representation with religious, regional and political significance. Central to many of my performances is my use of fabric, a practice rooted in my Cham-Muslim refugee migration experience when my family fled with only the clothes on our backs. Hybridizing religious aesthetics to disrupt ideas around otherness, textiles serve as both a storytelling device and a costume and sculptural element that extends my body’s surface and assumed personas into specific time-space intersections. Working transnationally, I continually investigate the artistic, spiritual, and political collisions of my diasporic, hybrid identity with the resolve that in-betweenness is a powerful space of creation and provocation. Works such as “The Buddhist Bug,” “The Red Chador,” and “White Mother” continue a methodology in which personal narratives shape my art. I believe performing narratives is an act of social engagement that contributes to collective healing. Performance and storytelling become ways of bridging the interior and exterior space of self as well as initiate critical dialogues between communities and institutions. As with most of my performance personas– they are always heroines and larger than life figures–womxn who are bold, courageous and unapologetic. The personas I create transcend confinement and defy essentialism because each are hybrid forms mixing and matching, reinventing and reimagining possibilities beyond any kind of dehumanization.

Selected Exhibitions

• Anida Yoeu Ali: The Buddhist Bug, Vincent Price Art Museum, Los Angeles, USA. Sept 26 – May 22, 2027
• The Red Chador: Close Encounters, Kellogg University Art Gallery, Pomona, USA. Feb 1 – Mar 20, 2025
• The Buddhist Bug, ICAD Indonesian Contemporary Art & Design, Jakarta, INDONESIA. Oct 9, 2024
• Anida Yoeu Ali: Hybrid Skin, Mythical Presence, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Seattle, USA. Jan 18 – July 7, 2024
• The Red Chador: Stranded (Commissioned Performances, Exhibition & Residency), PUNQ Festival at Umbrella Studio Contemporary Arts, Townsville, AUSTRALIA. July 31 – August 13, 2023
• The Red Chador: Genesis I Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham, USA. Oct 7, 2021- Nov 20, 2021
• The Red Chador: Genesis I (3-hour Public Intervention), Bellwether Performance Festival, Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, USA. Sept 11, 2021
• The Red Chador: Genesis I (Commissioned Performances & Residency), Shangri-La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design, Honolulu, USA. Nov 6-16, 2019
• The Buddhist Bug: A Creation Mythology, Wei-Ling Contemporary, Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA, June 19-Aug 20, 2019
• The Red Chador: Threshold Smithsonian Crosslines Culture Lab, Washington DC, USA. May 27-30, 2016
• The Buddhist Bug: Between Here & There, Bright Space, Melbourne, Australia, Nov 23- 29, 2015
• The Red Chador: What is it you fear? Widener Gallery, Hartford, USA. Nov 1-Dec 14, 2015
• Beheadings (12-hour Performance), Palais de Tokyo, Paris, FRANCE. April 20, 2015

Notable Festivals, Biennials & Triennials (selected)

• San Francisco Art Fair, Fort Mason Festival Pavilion, San Francisco, USA April 16-19, 2026
• Seattle Art Fair, Lumens Field Center, Seattle, USA July 16-20, 2025
• 14^th ICAD Indonesian Contemporary Art & Design, Jakarta, INDONESIA Oct 9- Nov 10, 2024
• PUNQ Contemporary Art Festival, North Queensland, AUSTRALIA Aug 1- 18, 2024
• 7^th National Asian American Theater Festival/ CONFest, Honolulu, USA May 19-22, 2022
• Bellwether Performance Festival at Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, USA Sept 6-20, 2021
• Biennale Jogja XV, Yogyakarta, INDONESIA Oct 20-Nov 30, 2019
• 12^th OzAsia Festival, Adelaide, AUSTRALIA Oct 2-Nov 11, 2018
• 12^th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, KOREA Sept 7-Nov 11, 2018
• 1^st Kuala Lumpur Biennale, Kuala Lumpur, MALAYSIA Nov 1 – Mar 31, 2018
• Art Central 2017, HONG KONG Mar 20-25, 2017
  Dak’art Dakar Biennale, Dakar, SENEGAL May 3-June 2, 2016
• 8^th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, AUSTRALIA Nov 21, 2015-Apr 10, 2016
• 5^th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, JAPAN Sep 6-Nov 30, 2014
• Our City Festival, Phnom Penh, CAMBODIA Sept 28-Oct 7, 2012 and Sept 8-18, 2011

Selected Publications

• Burns, Lucy. “Fashioning Deep Image in Anida Yoeu Ali’s Performance Art” The Fashion Studies Journal. January 2025
• Lanay, Jessica. “Anida Yoeu Ali” BOMB Magazine. July 1, 2024
• Lanay, Jessica. “Anida Yoeu Ali’s Art Against Islamophobia” ArtReview. June 27, 2024
• Clemons, Gayle. “Seattle Art Museum presents first solo by a Cambodian American artist” Seattle Times. Jan 10, 2024
• Vansynghel, Margo. “Most Anticipated Exhibits of 2024” Seattle Times. Jan 2, 2024
• Ali, Anida Yoeu. SEA: Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia Weiss Publications, Edited by Ute Meta Bauer, Karin Oen, Boon Hui Tan, 2023
• This Being Human/Agha Khan Museum Podcast. “Anida Yoeu Ali mixes Humor, Sci-Fi & Public Confrontation.” Nov 15, 2022
• Ali, Anida Yoeu. “Reflections” and “Camp” Poems, Massachusetts Review Special Issue: Asian American Literature, Rethinking the Canon. Winter 2018
• Ali, Anida Yoeu. “The Disappearance of the Red Chador: A Eulogy” Asian American Literary Review Special Issue: 25 Years of Where East Meets Community. Fall/Winter 2018
• Sailor, Craig. “‘Hello. How are you?’ asks Hilltop home in a big way” The News Tribune. Nov 24, 2018
• Nimura, Tamiko. “Muslim Khmer performance artist mourns her lost garment” Crosscut.com  Oct 11, 2018
• Ali, Anida Yoeu. “The Buddhist Bug: My Creation Mythology” special issue of Visual Anthropology; Myriad Modernities: Southeast Asian Visual Cultures, Edited by Viêt Lê & Lan Duong, April 2018
• Ho, Chloe. “Fleeting Moments: The challenges of documenting & collecting performance art” Art Republik, Dec 2017.
• “The Buddhist Bug” Queering Contemporary Asian American Art University of Washington Press, Edited by Laura Kina and Jan Christian Bernabe 2017
• Veridiano, Ruby. “In Sequined Headdress, Performance Artist Explores Attitudes Toward Muslim Women” NBCNews.com  May 2017
• Tagle, Thea “Teaching and Talking about Art & Performance in Unpresidented Times” ArtPractical.com Mar 23, 2017
• Schlunds-Vials, Cathy “Art, Activism, & Agitation: Anida Yoeu Ali” Verge: Studies in Global Asias (V3.1) 2017
• O’Hara, Kate. “Anida Yoeu Ali: In The Encounter” Peril.com April 10, 2016
• Leong, Russell. “The Buddhist Bug Project” CUNY FORUM: City University of New York Asian American/Asian Studies, Fall/Winter 2014-2015
• BBC News Interview.” Performance artist’s ‘Buddhist bug’ questions differences” by Ashleigh Nghiem Dec 17, 2014
• “Palimpsest for Generation 1.5,” Southeast Asian Women in the Diaspora: Troubling Borders anthology Ed. Isabelle Pelaud, Temple Press 2013
• Jay, Phoenix. “Agent Provocateur: Political Agitation as Performance Art” The Advisor. Issue 12
• Montaño, Diana. “Royal Lends Voice to Returnees.” Phnom Penh Post. April 4, 2012