About
Alia Syed, Priya (detail), 2007, composite photographic image from film negatives, 10.5 x 14.5 cm
Available from theartistsagency store
About
Alia Syed is an experimental film maker who's work has been shown extensively in cinemas and galleries around the world. She is interested in story telling, time and memory and the juncture of personal realities which she explores through different subjects positions in relation to culture, diaspora and location.
Syed’s films have been shown at numerous institutions around the world including BBC Arts Online (currently), The Triangle Space: Chelsea College of Arts (2014), Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2012-13, 5th Moscow Biennale (2013); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010); Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2009); XV Sydney Biennale (2006); Hayward Gallery, London (2005); Tate Britain, London (2003); Glasgow Museum of Modern Art, Scotland (2002); Iniva, London (2002); The New Art Gallery in Walsall (2002); and Tate Modern, London (2000), Reina Sophia Museum of Contemporary Art, Madrid (2009), Courtisane Festival, Belgium (2019) WKV, Stuttgart (2019) and Yale Centre for British Art (2019). Syed’s films have also been the subject of several solo exhibitions at Talwar Gallery in New York and New Delhi.
Alia was the Artist in Focus at the Courtisane Festival in Belgium between 3 and 7 April 2019.
Her work Meta Incognita: Missive II featured in the exhibition Migrating Worlds: The Art of the Moving Image in Britain at Yale Centre for British Art.
She was nominated for the Jarman Award in 2015 and the Paul Hamlyn Artists Award in 2020.
Alia Syed was born in 1964 in Swansea, and works between London and Glasgow. She has been making experimental films in Britain for over 25 years.
Alia’s work is available for exhibition, and purchase through Lux
Alia is supported by theartistsagency.
CV (Short)
(Download a full CV)
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2019
Talwar Gallery, New York, USA
2018
LUX, London
2017
Talwar Gallery, New York, USA
2012 – 2013
Los Angeles County Museum of Contemporary Art, USA
2009
Reina Sophia Museum of Contemporary Art, Madrid, Spain
2002
The New Art Gallery, Walsall
Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow
Selected Groups Exhibitions
2019 - 2020
Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, USA, Migrating Worlds: The Art of the Moving Image in Britain
WKV Stuttgart Germany, Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a life
Artefact, Belgium
2019
The Sunday Painter, Chips and Egg, London
Courtisane, Artist in focus, Belgium
Chobi Mela X Dhaka, Bangladesh
2018
KIran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, Delirium Equilibrium
2013
Fifth Moscow Bienale, Russia
2011
Museum of Modern Art, New York, On Line: Drawing Through the Twentieth Century
2006
Biennale of Sydney, Australia
2005 - 2006
British Art Show 6, Baltic Mill Newcastle + venues in Manchester, Nottingham & Bristol
Selected Past Screenings/Talks/Lectures
2020
Public intimacies correspondences, London short film festival, ICA cinema
2018
Winterthur Festival, Films in Dialogue: Alia Syed & Luke Fowler
Goldsmiths, London. CHASE Lecture
Chelsea School of Art, UAL. TrAIN Open Lecture The Migrating Image
Pavilion, Leeds.
Birkbeck Cinema, Alia Syed: Early Films and Influences
2017
Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, Recent work
University of Sussex. Poetics and Politics of Documentary
Close Up Cinema, London. Welcome to Britain
2016
Tate Britain, London, Co-op Dialogues
Tate Modern, London, From Reel to Real
Co-op Dialogues 1966-2016: Alia Syed & Kathryn Elkin
2011
Methods Lab, Goldsmiths University, London
2010
Conversation Pieces, Tate Britain, London
2006
Inventing Intimacy in Research Conference, Goldsmiths, London
Canberra School of Art
British Art Show, Bristol and Nottingham
2003
LACMA Los Angeles 3rd
Research Posts
2008
Research Fellow in Contemporary Art Practice, Southampton Solent University
2004
AHRC Research Fellow, Solent University, Southampton
Research Grants and Awards
2015
Jarman Award shortlisted artist
Arts Council England project grant for “Meta Incognita”
2013
Creative Scotland BBC Scotland for “Points of Departure”
2012
Arts Council England award “Panopticon Letters”
2011
Completion Award Arts Council of England “Priya”
Research Award, Southampton Solent University “Panopticon Letters”
2008
Arts Council England award “A Story Told”
2004
AHRC Research Fellow, Solent University, Southampton
2003
Completion Award, Arts Council of England “Eating Grass”
2002
London Production, Award production “Eating Grass”
1998
Completion Award, Arts Council of England for “Spoken Diary”
1995
Production Award, Arts Council of England for “Spoken Diary