Striving to resolve the paradox of home in the diaspora, Haneen Dalla-Ali’s work often explores the relationship between the recalling mind and the sensing body.
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Haneen was born in Baghdad, Iraq and immigrated to Canada alongside her family as a teenager, after living in the United Arab Emirates for a few years. Having called many cities home, the pieces she creates examine ways in which the juxtaposition of memories and sensory encounters with places and objects can explore the hybrid identity of an Arab and Muslim Canadian, living in the suburbs of Southern Ontario.
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Haneen is a 2019 graduate of the Master of Architecture program at the University of Waterloo, School of Architecture (where she also received her Bachelor of Architectural Studies in 2015), with a thesis that addressed identity and design. As the founder of Studio Haneen, having worked at architecture studios in Toronto, and participated in art events in Mississauga, Cambridge, and Kitchener (Ontario) over the past few years, her work emerges from the space that lies between art and architecture, and between hand-making and digital fabrication methodologies. Through her work, she hopes to create bridges between the cultures and places she grew up in, as well as the two disciplines she is a part of.
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photographs by Saraad Mohamud
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