In Person: Ali Arkady on the Fragility of Stone
A giant shattered slab of stone printed with a photographic image of people fleeing with their belongings recalls the rupturing and fracturing of the land as it bears witness to war. Working at the intersection of journalism and art, Ali Arkady’s practice reflects on the consequences of conflict as it draws parallels between the fallibility of memory and the fragility of stone. A number of his works were on display at Displacement, curated by Rahaab Allana, as part of the tenth edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival held in Goa from 12–21 December 2025. In this edited conversation, Arkady speaks about his unique process of monolithography, reimagining the material form of the photobook and documenting the after-effects of war in everyday lives.
Ali Arkady is an Iraq-born visual artist, photographer, filmmaker and arts teacher at the Beaux-Arts in Paris, and has been documenting social and political transformations in the Middle East and Europe for more than eighteen years. Arkady also fosters cross-cultural education and mentors emerging photojournalists through initiatives such as a UNHCR programme for Yazidi women and workshops at the VII Academy. His recent projects focus on migration and hospitality, blending documentary practice with artistic methods to reconsider the place of humanity in the present. His work has been exhibited at major international platforms, such as the Venice Biennale (2017) and Les Rencontres d’Arles (2018), as well as in exhibitions across Europe and the United States. He was the recipient of the Bayeux-Calvados Award (France, 2017), the Most Resilient Journalist Award (Netherlands, 2019) and the Prix des Amis des Beaux-Arts de Paris (France, 2022).
(Featured Image: Installation shot from Displacement at Serendipity Arts Festival (SAF), Goa. 2025. Photograph by Philippe Calia and Sunil Thakkar. Image courtesy of Ali Arkady and SAF.)
Recorded on 16 December 2025.
To learn more about works at the tenth edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival, watch the episode of In Person featuring Shaima Al-Tamimi as she discusses her film Don’t Get Too Comfortable (2021), which was on view as part of Displacement curated by Rahaab Allana, and engage with Mallika Visvanathan’s curated album from Kunga Tashi Lepcha’s Children of the Snowy Peak (2019–ongoing) which was on view as part of Murmurations curated by Ravi Agarwal.
To learn more about the previous editions of the Serendipity Arts Festival, watch episodes of In Person with Varun Kodanama as he discusses his film I Am Lawrence Wilson (2022), with Ravi Agarwal and David Verghese as they walkthrough their exhibition Carbon (2024) and with Dayananda Nagaraju and Niranjan NB as they speak about their project The Everlasting River (2024). Also read Radhika Saraf’s conversation with Kapil Das and Grant Davis from the Aldona Video Club (AVC) and her reflections on Nicole Gormley and Nancy Kwon’s Daughter of the Sea: Sisterhood in the Sea (2023), Anoushka Antonnette Mathews’ review of Niharika Popli’s If I Could Tell You (2024) and Aparna Chivukula’s essay on Ghosts in Machines (2024) curated by Damian Christinger.
