CREATIVE PRACTITIONER
Nabil Ali is a visual artist, tutor, and published author who specializes in object art, sculpture, and colour paint systems. He researches historical translated manuscripts, emphasizing painters' and illuminators' recipes and explores hidden details and transforms found objects from site-specific spaces into distinct designs. His work draws on historic content, linking practical elements and environment to a contemporary, non-linear creative process. Nabil’s methodology uses organic matter as his main material, enabling exploration of surroundings to create art. He grows, collects materials, and builds a close relationship with the process, pushing material boundaries and experimenting with new sculptures.
Nabil has won awards from Cambridge University, the British Council for work on Climate Change and cultural relations between the UK and other countries, Arts Council England, Essex Cultural Diversity Project, and Essex County Council. He received a Collectors Group Award in Colchester for research at FCT/IEM/NOVA in Lisbon, collaborating with international paint systems experts and chemists. This work led to exhibitions in the Europe for Culture celebrations and the Dyes in History and Archaeology international conference, which was led by Jo Kirby and FCT. He began a year-long artist residency at Cambridge University Botanic Garden, which led to a residency at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology (CEB), funded by the BBSRC and supported by Fruk Lab.
He is a visiting tutor at the University of Cambridge, teaching practicals for the Faculty of History students, and is known throughout the Art Conservation industry with insight into organic dyes and paint. He has delivered many creative projects across England and overseas and was selected by an international committee to exhibit at the Florence Biennale in Italy. Celebrated workshops taught at the Cambridge University Botanic Gardens, the Ferens Art Gallery, Firstsite Gallery, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter – University of Oxford, the Royal Drawing School, formally known as the Prince's Drawing School, and the International School Lycee Francais Charles Lepierre in Lisbon and elsewhere.
His first book is published by Princeton Univeristy Press and available to buy from here and elsewhere on the web.