As Anida Yoeu Ali dons a sequined chador and rich orange worm costume in The Red Chador and The Buddhist Bug, respectively, the artist creates and embodies an aesthetic of otherness marked by fantastical hypervisibility. Via public performance, her larger-than-life characters approach questions of diasporic identity, belonging, and religious perception.
As the Red Chador, the artist will dance and reach out to onlookers in deliberately benevolent motions. As the Buddhist Bug, Ali will lurk, her long form unmoving, its stoic silhouette exaggerated by bustling surroundings. Ali’s presence is thrilling and completely engrossing: what will these colorful entities do next? Where will they go? Where can they go?
Whenever I encounter documentation of performance art, I am always left wondering what my own reaction might be if I were really there. What would it be like to encounter a giant, winding bug, or a scarlet sparkling robe?
This question is particularly raised as The Red Chador traverses my hometown of Bellevue alongside her glittering “rainbow brigade” performers. As Ali walks the main street of my childhood, she tangibly transforms the downtown into a site of wonder, performance, and politics. Where does performance art happen? Certainly not your home, you might think. Ali’s work truly defamiliarized a space I had grown up in, and her performance reminded me that powerful disruption doesn’t have to be foreign or abstract. Global questions of art and identity are literally at home and reckonings of activism and activation exist not in the ether, but where you’re most comfortable.
Anida Yoeu Ali: Hybrid Skin, Mythical Presence
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA
January 18, 2024 to July 7, 2024