Diana Ali

Diana Ali is a visual artist, independent curator, FA lecturer and creative mentor who has loved art since childhood. Born in Rusholme, Manchester, she lived in Bangladesh from 2 years old, to 6 years old. When she was too young to go to school, she would play and create things with mud outside, her love for using the material would be used in her foundation degree, as it connects to her roots. Diana has a BA (Hons) Fine Art from Nottingham Trent University and a Master's in Contemporary Fine Art Curating/ Practice from Sheffield Hallam University.

For her pieces of work, she would experiment with different types of media, digital, text and food. Whilst creating a piece of art called 'Spiced,' which is spices and foodstuffs on canvas by hand, you could smell it rather than see it up close. But once the use for the art was not needed, it could not be preserved, so it was left in the garden, and Ali took a picture of the process of the canvas turning back to white.

'Chocolate Triptych' is created in a similar way to 'Spiced.' The processes and applications use cooking techniques such as mixing, melting, sprinkling and blending. The work has a physical approach in its application and the unpredictable combination of materials determines its outcomes. As the paintings live their appearance becomes mouldy thus concerning themes of decay and deterioration.

'Confection' is a mix of the previous techniques photographed on a canvas, but Ali uses the human body as the first canvas.

"The deceptively simple aesthetics and presentation of ‘Confection’ seeks out the viewer and entices her or him with an intangible seduction through the use of the chocolate smeared over its surfaces. The piece could be seen to fetishise the subject along both gender and racial lines. The purity of the brown skin and the sensuous, unthreatening poses encourage voyeurism, yet the lack of definition and focus offer a barrier to the voyeur’s domination: the subject refuses to yield to the viewer’s categorisation or classification. Herein lies the subject’s power. The eyes look away from the gaze, but in doing so they represent a refusal to let the subject be knowable, rather than fear, nervousness or submission. What is she thinking or feeling? Ecstasy? Sorrow? Reflection? Some form of introvert and self-aware pleasure, certainly. She is both seduced and seducer as she draws us in to interpret or guess at reasons for her pleasure, unaware of being watched yet self-conscious in her passive seduction. The subject seduces the viewer by offering an image of seduction."