Ala Younis is an artist focusing on research, film, and publishing projects. Younis’s projects investigate how the archive’s mishaps manipulate the imagination. She curated several shows, including Kuwait’s first pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2013). She worked as co-head of Berlinale’s Forum Expanded (2021-2024), co-artistic director of Singapore Biennale (2022), artistic director of the Akademie der Künste der Welt (2023–2025), artistic director of Darat al Funun (2008–2010), and research scholar at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art at NYU Abu Dhabi (2022–2025).
In 2012, she co-founded the independent publishing initiative, Kayfa ta, which researches and publishes on and through independent endeavours. Among the publications, Younis edited Tin Soldiers (2012), Territorial Subjects (Qattan Foundation, 2019), and Abdul Hay Mosallam Zarara (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2020). She co-edited On the Book of Sceneries (Dubai Expo 2020 and Hatje Cantz, 2022), How to maneuver: Shapeshifting texts and other publishing tactics (Kayfa ta and 421, 2020), and The Time Is Out of Joint (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2016).
Younis holds a BSc. in Architecture from the University of Jordan (1997) and MRes in Visual Cultures from Goldsmiths, University of London (2016) and is currently undertaking a DPhil in Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art at University of Oxford.
