Aliya Orr lives and works between London and Montreal. Orr earned her MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in 2023. An interdisciplinary artist working across mediums of installation, sculpture, performance and drawing, Orr’s work explores identity, mythology and personal storytelling. Growing up within the Islamic faith and outsider Sufi communities across various geographies she explores a fluidity of cultural, historical and religious perspectives. The unknown is a continuous force in Orr’s work, where belief and its reliance on uncertainty become active methodological principles. Through the building up of imaginative worlds, identities, familial bonds and cross generational relationships are explored, within processes of belonging, longing and home beyond the physical realm. Orr’s work examines methods of spectacle and ritual within daily life which allow moments of potential cosmological belonging to take place. These interests shore a practice which confronts emotional and social issues, looking at how ideology, globalisation, faith and new media interact to create atmospheres, societal norms and states of mind.

Recent notable solo & duo exhibitions include ‘Four Mothers And A Disappearing Sun’, Lake Space, London (2023); Aliya Orr and Sakchin Bessette (Light Society) Training For More Space, SSENSE Concept Store, Montreal, Canada (2019); Aliya Orr and Sakchin Bessette (Light Society) Altered States of Light Vol 1. Hyundai Motor Studio, Seoul, South Korea (2016). Orr’s work has been exhibited in public collections internationally, including the Museum Of Singapore, Arsenal Contemporary Montreal and Hyundai Motor Studio Seoul.