About

Ali Hval (she/her) (b. 1993, Sacramento, CA) is a visual artist currently living and working in Iowa City, Iowa. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Instruction 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 and at the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (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 came to understand the expectations of what it meant to “properly” be a woman. Today, my work challenges and redefines those notions, using femininity as a tool to reveal gender disparities and the relentless scrutiny and politicization of the female body. From afar, my work sparkles and seduces with frilly, glittering surfaces. Up close, it reveals layers of political commentary, feminist critique, and the quieter, everyday stories of being a woman.

Rather than rejecting femme aesthetics or shying away from female sexuality, my pieces embrace and amplify them, inserting awkwardness, humor, and theatricality into the conversation. Working primarily in ceramics and fabric, I create sculptures that echo oversized jewelry, shoes, and other fashion and domestic artifacts. These pieces are flirtatious and intentionally attention-seeking—crafted to capture viewers with their playful materials while anchoring deeper narratives about identity and empowerment. Rhinestones, pom-pom hair ties, and nail polish flood their surfaces.

These exaggerated, larger-than-life sculptures serve as self-portraits, reflecting both my own experiences and broader stories of womanhood. Viewers can imagine themselves adorned in these monumental pieces, with their impractical weight and scale, and consider the physical and symbolic burdens often imposed on women. Each work speaks in its own voice—excessive, unabashadly hyper-feminine, and most importantly, pink—illuminating the power and complexity embedded in femininity.