Ala Younis was born in 1974 in Kuwait City, and received a BSc in architecture from the University of Jordan, Amman, in 1997. Working in installation, publishing, and video, she employs archival found material in research-based projects that combine personal narratives with collective and national histories of the Middle East. Younis is interested in the roots and development of modern Arab identity, both political and social. Her artistic and curatorial practice is supported by an almost obsessive mining of material culture focused on films, magazine and newspaper articles, interviews, and spoken testimonials. Younis’s 2008 project Nefertiti investigates the eponymous sewing machine—a relic of the years immediately following the 1952 revolution and independence of Egypt—and its attendant political and domestic valence. The establishment of a republic brought with it a widespread acceleration of technological development and nationalization. A symbol of this new modern moment, the Nefertiti sewing machine allowed women to become economically self-sufficient. In Younis’s installation, which incorporates five of the machines, an explanatory video, and a publication, the artist interweaves the private and public negotiations of political sovereignty. Likewise, Younis’s ongoing project Tin Soldiers (2010– ), originally presented at Home Works 5: A Forum on Cultural Practices in Beirut in 2010 and at the Istanbul Biennial in 2011, distills the pervasive militarization of the region in the modern era into a poignant installation of thousands of neatly organized toy soldiers. Customized to represent the active troops of nine Middle Eastern countries, the miniatures call to mind the armies that were involved in the region’s recent wars, and illustrate its complex political realities. Younis’s work has been the subject of solo presentations at Darat al-Funun—The Khalid Shoman Foundation, Amman, Jordan (2009) and Delfina, London (2010); it has also been shown in group exhibitions at the Kunsthallen Brandts Klædefabrik, Odense, Denmark (2009), Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai (2009), Al-Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jerusalem (2009), Ashkal Alwan Association, Beirut (2010); Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar (2012); Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris (2013); and New Museum, New York (2014). Younis participated in the Iran Biennial: Art in the Contemporary Islamic World (2005), Asian Art Biennial, Dhaka (2006), New Museum Triennial, New York: The Ungovernables (2012), Gwangju Biennial, South Korea (2012), and the Venice Biennale: All the World’s Futures (2015). Younis is a recipient of prizes from Cairo Youth Salon and Jordanian Artists Association (both 2005), and of the Bellagio Creative Arts Fellowship (2013). As a curator, she has organized exhibitions in Algeria, Egypt, France, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Kingdom, as well as the nomadic Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence and the first Kuwaiti Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2013). Younis is based in Amman, Jordan.