Anahi Alviso-Marino is a researcher fellow and co-coordinator at the collective “Penser l’urbain par l’image,” Ecole des Ponts ParisTech/University Gustave Eiffel. After she completed her MA from Columbia University in New York and her BA from Complutense University in Madrid, she obtained a PhD in Political Science at the University Paris 1-Sorbonne and the University of Lausanne. She conducts research on the sociological lives of objects made by visual artists from cities of the Arabian Peninsula, focusing more recently on the biographic trajectories of public monumental artworks in Kuwait, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia and previously, on proposing a political sociology of visual arts in Yemen. She combines political sociology and ethnography with a methodological approach at the intersection of social sciences and audiovisual practices using creative protocols and games. She is teaching in 2023 at the Governing Large Metropolis Master program at the Urban School of SciencesPo in Paris.

Besides publishing her work (Participations, Arabian Humanities, Les cahiers d’Études sur le Monde Arabe et la Méditerranée, Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée, Géographie et cultures), she has exhibited her research and archival materials in Paris (Palais de Tokyo, Villa Vassilieff and Bétonsalon) and Spain (Casa Arabe). Her forthcoming book focuses on art and politics in Yemen, and she is presently working on a research-creation project dedicated to mapping monument biographies across the Arabian Peninsula supported by two collaborative grants from the EUR ArTeC (2021) and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts (2021/2022), and by two individual research residencies at Alserkal Arts Foundation (2022) and at the Henry Moore Foundation (2023). With this project, she is working towards a film that uses game protocols to decentre knowledge production, disciplinary hierarchies, and approaches to archival and research materials about cities, monuments, public art and the state in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Jeddah, and Kuwait City.

Recently published:

2023    A Monument Once Called ‘Kuwaiti Women, Giving and Sacrifice’, in Monumental Shadows. On museums, memory and the making of history, Art Jameel, Kaph Books.

2021    “More than Papers and Walls. An Atelier as an Artwork » / « Des papiers, des murs, et bien plus encore. Un atelier comme œuvre d’art », in Myriam Ben Salah et Benjamin Thorel (eds.), People Love War Data & Travels. Neïl Beloufa, édition bilingue français/anglais, Paris, After8Books.

Research residencies and grants recently awarded:

2023    Researcher-in-residence at Henry Moore Foundation, Perry Green, United Kingdom.

2022    Researcher-in-residence at Alserkal Arts Foundation, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

2021-2022      Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts research and development grant to individual projects, with Neïl Beloufa.