Ali El-Darsa works across moving image, performance, installation and sound. His work examines structures of belonging in transnational contexts, emphasizing the specificity of time-based media’s significance to creating networked, mediated memories and narratives. His interdisciplinary research in performance opens onto fields of text, word, sign and languages, questioning collaboratively the ways in which language influences movement, thought systems and, by extension, the discourses and interpretations of a work of art, both in its matter and metaphorical sense. It approaches the notion of communication through its means, methods and media, whether oral, written or coded–examining the transmission of customary, historical and contemporary narratives.

El-Darsa lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He holds a Master of Visual Studies (MVS Studio) from John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto. He is a 2025–2026 fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart and was a 2022 fellow at Villa Aurora Residency in Los Angeles.