Al-An deSouza’s works have been exhibited extensively including at The Pompidou Centre, Paris; Moderna Museet, Sweden; Mori Art Museum, Japan; Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa; Hayward Gallery, UK; International Center of Photography, NY; Stedelijk Museum, The Netherlands; Museum Kunst Palast, Germany; Museo Tamayo, Mexico; Memphis Brooks Museum, TN; Museum for African Art, NY; Smithsonian Museum, DC; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Gwangju Biennale, Korea; 3rd Guangzhou Triennale, China; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF; Fowler Museum, LA; Blaffer Art Museum, TX; and Krannert Art Museum, Champaign, IL. In 2011, on an invitation by The Phillip’s Collection, deSouza created The World Series in response to Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series, and their work was subsequently featured in a solo exhibition at the museum along with Lawrence’s works. They recently were featured in an expansive solo at The Johnson Museum at Cornell University, NY.
Al-An deSouza was born in 1958 in Nairobi, Kenya to immigrant parents of Indian descent and grew up in the United Kingdom. They graduated from the Bath Academy of Fine Art, England with a BA in Fine Art, participated in the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and obtained their MFA in Photography from UCLA, Los Angeles. deSouza’s publications include “How Art Can Be Thought: A Handbook for Change” in which they examine how art is discussed, valued and taught within a politicized global culture while in their novel Ark of Martyrs the artist pens a fictional rewrite of Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel Heart of Darkness blending poetry, rap and prose through a contemporary prism.
Al-An deSouza lives and work in the Bay Area, California, where they are a professor in the Department of Art Practice at University of California, Berkeley.
