Ali Cherri

Ali Cherri’s multidisciplinary practice encompasses film, sculpture, installation, drawing and performance.

Born in Beirut, a year into the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990), Cherri examines violence against bodies, objects and nature in regions of conflict, and reflects on the processes through which historical and cultural narratives are shaped.

The exhibition How I Am Monument looks at history through a material lens. Cherri’s recent mud-based sculptures take inspiration from archaeological artefacts and the natural world. Relics, sourced from auctions and antique markets, are grafted onto mud bodies to create hybrid beings. Cherri uses mud as both a material and a metaphor for creation. His video installation Of Men and Gods and Mud (2022) further explores mud’s creative power.

Cherri’s work interrogates the ways in which political violence is witnessed and disseminates into people’s bodies, and how it scars the physical and cultural landscape. The film The Watchman and the installation The Seven Soldiers (both 2023) visualise the impact of military discipline on human bodies in times of conflict, while other related works consider how natural elements, such as vegetation, bear witness to historical trauma.

A series of newly commissioned sculptural works reflect on the visual language of monuments and the representation of power. With Sphinx (2024), Cherri investigates the interplay between mud – a humble and fragile material – and bronze, traditionally used to create statues of heroes and major political figures. With Toppled Monuments 1–6 (Kharkiv, Aleppo, Baghdad, Richmond VA, Vienna, Bristol), wooden sculptures represent the empty plinths of statues of deposed leaders. The blank spaces invite us to re-evaluate our past and imagine future possibilities.

How I Am Monument has been developed in partnership with Vienna Secession, where it was first presented from 6 December 2024 to 23 February 2025. The exhibition at Baltic is the second, expanded chapter of this collaboration, and the first major institutional presentation of the artist’s work in the UK.