Ali Paydar is a research based, interdisciplinary artist who works primarily with living and organic materials and processes. Her practice employs various mediums including fermentation, natural dyeing, paper making from plants, herbal medicine making, ceramics, and artist bookmaking. Her work speaks to interdependence, kinship, and both the agency and stories of nonhumans. Of Iranian and Swiss ancestry, with a strong relationship to Southern California, her practice is rooted in a exploration of hybridity, and a rejection of the borders and ideals of bodily/cultural purity that have come to define our relations through colonization. In her pieces, new futures come alive through collective nurturing, ingestion, and transformation, various nonhumans and humans become intertwined, and their histories transform. 

Her work has widely exhibited, most recently at the Caryll Mudd and Norman F. Sprague Jr. Gallery (LA), Meinblau Projektum (Berlin), ZK/U (Berlin), and Tete Gallery (Berlin). Alexandra has been awarded several residencies and grants including the Picture Berlin residency, The Laura Trombley Humanities and Art Endowed Research Grant, and the Mellon Art and Environment Travel Grant.

Pictured: "Conjoined" (2015)