Born on the binational precipice between the United States and Mexico, Ali Dipp is interested in the evolution of America’s self-representation. Her hometown of El Paso, the former jean capital of the world before NAFTA, sets the backdrop to thematic currents she probes by creating paintings on denim with thread. Informed by her Lebanese and Syrian familial lineages that migrated to Mexico and the US, Dipp fundamentally sees America as a moving picture. From her intrinsic proximity to both the southwestern border and her immigrant heritage, Dipp posits a nation’s ideals are wrought from the labor of daily efforts; aspiration as an American condition has long been central to Dipp’s work. While Dipp originally began making denim stitch paintings to commemorate her family’s immigrant legacy, she has expanded her initial investigations to think about a broadened scope of trajectories across American history…Employing the use of a manual sewing machine, Dipp repurposes denim and thread to speak broadly about what the borderland vividly visualizes: the shape of a nation… Dipp graduated from the Brown-RISD Dual Degree Program in May 2022 with dual degrees from Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design. Dipp is now pursuing an interdisciplinary Ph.D. at Stanford University in Modern Thought and Literature. She is the recipient of the Royal Drawing Academy’s Dumfries Residency in Scotland.
[excerpted from Franklin Parrasch Gallery website: www.franklinparrasch.com]