The Anchorlight gallery artist combines figurative elements with sculpture, sound and a choreographed performance in her latest body of work.
by Colony Little | photography by Joshua Steadman
For years, Alia El-Bermani had a forbidden word within the home she shared with her husband and two children: bored. “You’re not allowed to say that word in our house,” she says. “If you do, you have to clean all the potties.”
El-Bermani has an established practice in Raleigh specializing in figurative painting, open studio work and instruction. Her children are grown, but their primary weapon against boredom — an “activities closet” filled with puzzles and art materials — continues to be useful in the battle against creative stagnation.
In 2016, for example, El-Bermani found her daughter’s origami kit in the closet. “I was supposed to be painting, but I just opened the closet door, found the origami paper and started folding,” she says. “I loved the geometry.” She began exploring those planes through folding paper masks and other objects, which she would then paint or sketch as subjects. It also sparked an idea: she requested paper snowflakes from artists around the world and then incorporated thousands of them into a 2017 painting titled I’m a Special Snowflake, a self-portrait about visibility in the art world, which won a second-place award in Artspace’s juried Fresh show in 2018.
El-Bermani, who is of Iraqi and Swedish descent, grew up in Marshfield, Massachusetts. She had an aptitude for science but was also a talented ballet dancer and artist. “I was most drawn to the Boston School painters and 19th-century realism,” she says. “I remember loving a self-portrait of Ellen Day Hale — she looks badass, she’s a boss.”
She initially attended Roger Williams University in Rhode Island planning to double major in art and dance, but soon transferred to Laguna College of Art and Design in Southern California to focus on figurative painting, drawn to both the curriculum and bohemian vibe there. “It looked like a little unique village,” says El-Bermani. “Coming from this big liberal arts college, it just felt like home: welcoming and weird.”
After graduating in 2000, El-Bermani remained in Laguna for seven years, teaching painting and figure drawing, including as an instructor at her alma mater from 2003 to 2005. She continued to build her portfolio of work through paintings that celebrate the female form in intimate moments of relaxed repose and self-reflection. In California, this work was widely embraced, and her paintings were featured in five solo exhibitions and dozens of group shows throughout the state.
When her husband was offered a job relocation, El-Bermani and their family moved to the Triangle in 2008, eventually settling in Apex. Here, she noticed a reluctance to show realism and nudity in local galleries. “When I tried to submit my work to shows, everybody was like, oh, she paints nudes,” she says. So she focused her gallery efforts on the national market, and locally, she’s turned her focus to teaching.
She recreated the vibe she was so attracted to in Laguna Beach within her studio at Anchorlight. Entering the space feels like visiting the eclectic home of a world traveler, and much like the closet in her house, it’s filled with resources for artists looking to ignite their imaginations. In addition to the tools of the trade — easels, paint supplies and artwork line the walls — there’s a cozy seating area surrounded by plants and a small library of books (reading and journaling are an important part of her artist process).
El-Bermani has assembled a menagerie of ceramic busts on one wall next to a cabinet filled with bric-a-brac and animal skulls; a stuffed peacock perches in one corner and a full-size skeleton rests in another. It is a space that inspires creativity, invites curiosity and embraces diversity. “I want whoever is in my space to feel safe and welcome,” she says.
“When we have that, that’s the best learning environment.” El-Bermani’s studio space is frequently filled with artists and art lovers. “I don’t have community if I don’t make it,” she says. Here, El-Bermani holds open figure-painting sessions and painting workshops and hosts artists from around the world to teach classes.
Artist Jalen Jackson started taking classes with El-Bermani in 2019 and went on to share studio space with her for a year. “Alia has the phenomenal ability to show someone how to look at things from different perspectives,” Jackson says. “She brilliantly explains why imperfections shouldn’t be ignored but embraced. Her professionalism is something to be admired.”
El-Bermani is currently exploring a new body of work that will combine figurative elements with sculpture, sound and a choreographed performance. The jumping-off point for this career-spanning installation, tentatively titled The Futures We Behold, comes from a Shakespeare quote in which Lady Macbeth tells her husband to look like an innocent flower — but be the serpent hiding underneath.
Building off her folding experiments, she’s been creating a large-scale serpentine skeleton out of paper. It will be displayed alongside portraits of women encased in skeletal forms, a theme that she first explored in a 2019 solo show at Anchorlight titled Like Sound Through Water.
Recently, El-Bermani brought her portrait subjects together to photograph the images she’ll use to paint the portraits. As a conversation prompt, El-Bermani asked the women, who had never met before, to reflect on the futures they envision for themselves. The dialog inspired an immediate bond. “It was so beautiful,” she says. “They each connected and learned a little bit about each other.”
The session and the work that will come from it embody the alchemy El-Bermani has consciously crafted throughout her life: being open to surprising sources of inspiration, building her own community and creating a safe space for others to do the same. “I’m trying to be my whole self in this,” she says.
This article originally appeared in the August 2024 issue of WALTER magazine.
