“Human perfection is only in the imagination – in the desire for another reality.” Olfa Ben Ali was born in a suburb of Toulouse, France as the daughter of Tunisian immigrants. Being raised between these two cultures has fundamentally influenced her artistic work. In her films and videos she combines a documentary approach with a strong poetic atmosphere and imagery, that embodies the contrast between the world the immigrant has left behind and the alien world of the new “home” country, that has adopted him/her. By shifting thematically from the political to the emotional, the friction and tension that the immigrant is faced with, is given a voice.
Olfa Ben Ali lives and works in Amsterdam, where she received her bachelor of art from the renowned Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2012. During the last 4 years, she has been following, documenting and observing refugees in Amsterdam, Lesbos, Calais, Dunkerk. Olfa Ben Ali and Geertjan de Vugt taught the worksop Refuse.
