About

Ali Hval (she/her) (b. 1993, Sacramento, CA) is a visual artist currently living and working in Iowa City, Iowa. She is currently a Lecturer in Painting and Drawing at the University of Iowa. She earned her MFA from the University of Iowa in Painting and Drawing with honors, and BFA in Painting from the University of Alabama with honors. Her work sits at the crux of ceramics, installation, fabric, and painting.

Ali has received grants from the Iowa Arts Council as well as from the Windgate Fellowship by the Center of Craft, Creativity, and Design in Asheville, North Carolina. Most recently, she is a recipient of the 2024-2025 Iowa Artist Fellowship. She was the 2022 Stuart Artist-in-Residence at South Dakota State University, and was a 2020 resident at the Chautauqua School of Art. Ali was named the Emerging Woman Artist by Arts to Hearts Project in 2023. She has exhibited her work across the country, including at Ceysson y Bénétière in New York City, Site: Brooklyn and Atlantic Gallery in New York, and South Bay Contemporary in Los Angeles. She has also exhibited at NCECA. She has had mentions in New York Jewelry Week, Create! Magazine, and The New Yorker.

Also an avid muralist, Ali has completed over 50 public murals and projects in various communities across the US. These murals have ranged from large-scale projects for nonprofits and municipal entities, to projects which have directly involved community members in the painting and designing process.

Process | Work

Growing up in the southern US, I quickly learned there was a certain expectation of how to “properly” be a woman: now, I challenge what that looks like, using performed femininity as a tool to reveal not only gender disparities, but also to illuminate the relentless critique and politicization of the female body. Instead of hiding or denying femme aesthetics and female sexuality, my pieces embrace, highlight, and empower them, while acknowledging all the awkwardness, humor, and theatricality they entail.

My work is a balancing act between sensual forms and playful materials. By augmenting erotic, sensual armatures with glistening rhinestones, feathery pom-poms, and candy-colored fabrics, I assign new meanings and connotations to the forms. Using primarily ceramics and fabric, I create sculptures that evoke pieces of oversized jewelry, shoes, and other fashion and domestic items. I begin a piece by sculpting a high-fired ceramic component, painting it, and carefully studding the surface one by one with tiny rhinestones. From here, I will add textile elements as well as beauty supplies materials like hair scrunchies and nail polish.

The resulting pieces are flirtatious, attention-seeking, and deceptively superficial. Toying with their own actualities and potential, they can speak—glittery and powerful—to politics in their own voice: excessive, unabashedly hyper-feminine, and most importantly, pink.