Hiba Ali is the fourth artists to be featured in the CFAR Project Incubator series spanning the 2023-24 academic year. The series is a partnership between the Knight Campus and the College of Design / Center for Art Research (CFAR). Ali's series starts on Feb. 5.

CFAR affords artists working in any medium the opportunity to explore and conceptualize new work as a part of a vibrant, interdisciplinary research community that is supported by cutting-edge facilities and technical staff. This program is born out of CFAR and Knight Campus’s goals to create nimble systems that catalyze innovation and discovery by responding to the needs of individual’s specific research agendas. The incubator's emphasis is not necessarily on the production of a body of work, but instead on speculative, practice-based inquiry focused on ideation, experimentation, prototyping, testing, fabricating, and theoretical research to initiate and incubate new work.

The concept of Ali's project will develop at least 15 amulet jewelry pieces, such as necklaces and rings, which are anchored in the Swahili practice of Sufi devotion. Each necklace will draw on sacred geometry and have a cavity for scented paste consisting of jasmine, myrrh, frankincense, and rose. "In my de-colonial, antiracist, and feminist arts practice, it is very important to center the margins, people and places, and histories that are forgotten, hidden or cast-aside, to visualize underrepresented histories and issues of caste, class, and antiblackness," Ali said.

Learn more about CFAR and all of the scheduled artists for this year's incubator series. The CFAR Project Incubator series is made possible by a grant from the Ford Family Foundation.