JAFFAR ALY
“Jaffar Aly’s practice has produced bodies of works which illustrate and highlight how the embodied and lived experience from those who dwell in the ‘Undercommons’ (F. Moten & S. Harney 2013) are of value and crucial in destabilising dominant discourses and decentring traditional Western / Eurocentric definitions of value and non-value. Introducing the voices of (an)Other in the mainstream has disrupted the flow of colonial reproduction but ideas of white supremacy, Eurocentric supremacy, and Western supremacy still run deep as the ‘unnamed political system’ (C.W. Mills 1999: 1) that has formed the contemporary, modern, and aesthetic world we live in today. Jaffar’s abstract story telling when told by a voice from the undercommons highlights the Absurd and helps decentre, destabilise and decolonise.
Matters of race, class and gender, multiculturalism can transcend the unnecessary academic jargon and its wearisome explanations. Breaking down that ivory wall of academic exclusivity that divides the public where the living happens, through Jaffar Aly’s abstract story telling he educates, depicts untold and erased narratives through expressionist paintings and curating spaces and events. In other words, his choice of varying mediums produces an alternative form of knowledge production from the consolidated canon.”
Aly was selected for the An Effort residency for the way he highlights his community in London in his portraits. Through intimate questioning and dialogue Aly’s portraits bring out the stories that lie within his subjects. In addition to his portraits, Jaffar Aly coordinates group canvas’s in a workshop/gathering hybrid model.
As part of the research that makes up his practice, Aly has authored a number of essays which can be read on his website - under Anthropology.
Along with his solo exhibition Black Angst at Deptford Gallery in 2021, Aly’s work has bee apart of numerous group exhibitions in London.
CLR* Red, but much larger
CLR* Violet, but much larger
CLR* Yellow, but much larger
