Eman Ali is an Omani-Bahraini visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice explores the interplay between gender, religion and socio-political ideologies in the Khaleeji culture. Her latest body of work, ‘Elsewhere’, is about wanting to be somewhere, anywhere, other than where you are. It’s about escape, but it’s also about memory and the way places slip away from us, even as we try to hold onto them. As a media partner for Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF), we got the opportunity to talk to this rising star about the solo exhibition she presented with Hunna Art at the fair this year.

Nataal: ‘Elsewhere’ is set in a surreal, dreamlike landscape and the title itself suggests a space that is both real and imagined. How did you arrive at this title and what does it mean within the context of your work?

Eman Ali: I was thinking about Illyria in Twelfth Night, not as a real place, but as a metaphorical landscape, a feeling. I was inspired by how Shakespeare imagined Illyria as a place of mistaken identities and longing, a kind of beautiful nowhere. That’s what ‘Elsewhere’ is for me, a space between reality and fiction, where things feel both distant and familiar, where the dream of abundance is already disappearing. Living in one of the hottest regions in the world, the Gulf in the Arabian Peninsula, where the air feels heavier every year, I can’t ignore the way everything is changing. The intense heat isn’t just something I read about; I feel it burning my skin, affecting my surroundings. ‘Elsewhere’ is a way of making sense of that grief, of trying to find beauty in the loss.

Nataal: The urgency of climate change translates visually through water and fire — two elements that hold deep historical and mythological significance. Were there any specific cultural references that influenced their use?

EA: Dualities are something I play with a lot, especially in this project. Fire and water as symbols of life and destruction, desire and grief. In Oman and Bahrain, my hometowns, the heat is becoming unbearable. Every year, the headlines repeat the same warning: the Gulf will be uninhabitable in the near future. It’s terrifying. What will happen to my land? Where will we go? I grew up by the ocean and my connection to water is everything. It’s where I feel safest. I could never live anywhere landlocked, and if I visit a place without the sea or another body of water, I never stay long. The sea is always there, in the stories, in the history: pearling, trade, migration, loss. It’s part of where I come from. Water is life but it’s also a grave. And fire is rage. It’s destruction, but from burning, life can grow too.

Conceptually, I keep coming back to the idea of slippage. The way things shift, dissolve, become something else before you can hold onto them. Places disappear, swallowed by time, by climate, by neglect. Memory fades, history erodes and meaning slips through your fingers. The land is changing in ways we don’t even fully understand – but we are responsible for it. And in the middle of all that, we’re here, suspended. Not quite past, not quite future. Just hovering. With ‘Elsewhere’, I intentionally didn’t want to create something didactic. No fear-mongering. I wanted it to feel like a memory, like a place you half-remember from a dream. Beautiful yet uneasy. A world slipping away, erasing itself, but still somehow wanting to be held. That liminal space is where I want my work to exist.

Nataal: The works’ juxtapositions, water as both abundant and fragile, and imagery that is fractured yet ethereal, are much like AI itself — limitless in potential yet dependent on human input. How do you see AI in the art world as a medium that reflects contemporary anxieties around control, creation and destruction?

EA: I always refer to my use of AI as a collaboration. There's a level of control I hold because I use my own imagery, and then there's a moment when I relinquish that control and surrender to the machine’s unpredictability. I see the space between input and output as a sculptural act – data reshaped into something that can never be reproduced. AI is both physical and ephemeral, and that juxtaposition fascinates me. In ‘Elsewhere’, AI became a way to hold onto things that are disappearing, from landscapes to memories to time itself. But it’s fragile, always on the verge of collapse, always a little unreal. It mirrors the uncertainty of the world we’re living in. We like to think we’re in control, but AI, like nature, reminds us that we’re not. It’s both a tool and a reflection of our fears of losing reality itself. But we have to remember, in that loss, something new emerges.

Nataal: What inspired using AI to actualise the abstract as opposed to more traditional forms of art?

EA: I’m a storyteller and I use whatever medium helps me say what I need to say. Most of the time it’s photography but I also make sculptures, books and installations. AI is just another tool, another way to explore ideas and push my own creative boundaries. I love the unpredictability and play, stepping into the unknown. I know AI isn’t fully accepted in the fine art world yet, but honestly, I couldn’t care less. Especially, the purists clinging to the past as if it’s going to save them. Creativity is about curiosity and I’m curious about AI. That’s why I wanted to disrupt the art fair space with my work in Cape Town. Those who visited the booth didn’t know if they were paintings or photographs and when I told them it was an AI collaboration, they couldn’t believe it. The work is deeply rooted in my own practice, built from my own imagery and selected visual textures. So, my AI work sits comfortably with my photographic work because the vision is the same.

Nataal: How do you see Elsewhere functioning — as a warning, a fleeting memory, or a possibility for something new?

EA: All of the above. I leave it up to the viewer to find their own meaning in the work. People have engaged with it in so many different ways. On the last day of the fair, a Capetonian woman visited the booth and became so emotional she started crying. She was at a loss for words and just gave me the biggest hug. That moment took me by surprise because it was not something I was expecting to happen. It was deeply touching and something I’ll carry with me forever. There’s a spiritual resonance in the work, something you can feel rather than explain. People were moved, in awe, and curious. Seeing that response firsthand was incredibly meaningful. I never try to force an interpretation. I prefer to let them sit with it, in whatever space makes sense to them.

This story was created in collaboration with Letterhead.