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.

With thanks to Imane Farès gallery

Exhibition at Baltic supported by:
ArtAV
Fluxus Art Projects
Henry Moore Foundation

Artist Biography

Recent solo exhibitions include: Returning the Gaze, The Egyptian Museum, Turin, 2024, Envisagement, Giacometti Foundation, Paris, 2024, Dreamless Night, Frac Bretagne, Rennes, 2024 and GAMeC, Bergamo, 2023; Humble and quiet and soothing as mud, Swiss Institute, New York, 2023; Ceux qui nous regardant, CAC La Traverse, Alfortville, 2023; If you prick us, do we not bleed?, National Gallery, London, 2022 (artist in residence). Cherri's work has been exhibited at several biennales, among them the Biennial Secs Videobrasil, São Paulo, 2023; the Sharjah Biennial, 2023 and 2017; the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India, 2022; Manifesta 13, Marseille, 2020; the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Ekaterinburg, 2019, and his work is in leading art institutions collections such as MoMA New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris; Guggenheim New York and Abu Dhabi, MACBA Barcelona, Sursock Museum, Beirut, The British Museum, London, Jameel Arts Center, Dubai and Mathaf, Doha. In 2022, he was awarded the Silver Lion for his participation in the International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, The Milk of Dreams.