Alia Syed is an experimental film maker who's work has been shown extensively in cinemas and galleries around the world. She is interested in story telling, time and memory and the juncture of personal realities which she explores through different subjects positions in relation to culture, diaspora and location.

Syed’s films have been shown at numerous institutions around the world including BBC Arts Online (currently), The Triangle Space: Chelsea College of Arts (2014), Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2012-13, 5th Moscow Biennale (2013); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010); Museo National Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2009); XV Sydney Biennale (2006); Hayward Gallery, London (2005); Tate Britain, London (2003); Glasgow Museum of Modern Art, Scotland (2002); Iniva, London (2002); The New Art Gallery in Walsall (2002); and Tate Modern, London (2000). Syed’s films have also been the subject of several solo exhibitions at Talwar Gallery in New York and New Delhi.

Alia was the Artist in Focus at the Courtisane Festival in Belgium between 3 and 7 April 2019.

Her work Meta Incognita: Missive II featured in the exhibition Migrating Worlds: The Art of the Moving Image in Britain at Yale Centre for British Art.

Alia was a featured In Focus artists for the Open City Documentary Festival, for which Meta Incognita was presented in exhibition form, along with other still works at Mimosa House Gallery.

She was nominated for the Jarman Award in 2015 and the Paul Hamlyn Artists Award in 2020.

Alia Syed was born in 1964 in Swansea, Wales and lives between London and Glasgow. She has been making experimental films in Britain for over 25 years.

Alia’s work is available for exhibition, and purchase through Lux

Alia Syed, Pantoptican Letters: Missive I, 2012, 16mm/Digital, 23 min (3 min, excerpt)