Anida Yoeu Ali is an old friend and Cambodian American artist who practices the Muslim faith and has ancestry from Malay, Cham, Khmer, and Thai communities. I was lucky to catch her in Los Angeles before her upcoming solo show at the Vincent Price Art Museum. We talked about what she's bringing to the museum, her beginnings and transformations as an artist, her faith, family and more.

From her website:

Anida Yoeu Ali (b. 1974, Battambang, Cambodia) is an interdisciplinary artist whose works span performance, installation, new media, public encounters, and political agitation. Born in Cambodia and raised in Chicago, she is a first-generation American of mixed Malay, Cham, Khmer, and Thai ancestries.

Working transnationally, Ali investigates the artistic, spiritual, and political collisions of her diasporic, hybrid identity with the resolve that in-betweenness is a powerful space for creation and provocation. Ali believes performance allows for a magic of reinventing the self and projecting “larger-than-life” personas liberated from oppressive representations.

Currently based in Tacoma, Ali is also the co-founder of Studio Revolt, an independent artist-run media lab whose works have agitated the White House, won awards at film festivals, and redefined what it means to create sans studio and trans-nomadically. Ali’s works have been acquired by public and private collections and globally exhibited, including at Haus der Kunst, Palais de Tokyo, the Smithsonian, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, and Shangri La Museum of Islamic Art, Culture & Design.

A recipient of the 2024 Arts Innovator Award, 2020 Art Matters Fellowship and the 2015 Sovereign Asian Art Prize from Hong Kong, she received her MFA from School of the Art Institute Chicago. Ali’s artworks are included in several private collections and public collections. As an educator, she serves as a Senior Artist-in-Residence at the University of Washington Bothell, and as an artist, she works between the Asia-Pacific region and the US.-

https://www.anidaali.com/The Buddhist Bug9/26/26 – 5/22/27Vincent Price Art Museum1301 Avenida Cesar Chavez, Monterey Park, CA 91754Opening CeremonySat, Sep 26, 20262 pm – 5 pmhttps://vpam.org/exhibitions/anida-yoeu-alithe-buddhist-bug/

Timestamps:

[Recorded on 9/4/2026]

00:00 Sitting down with Anida Yoeu Ali

00:51 Bringing The Buddhist Bug to the Vincent Price Art Museum

02:55 What The Buddhist Bug is, and why it lands now

06:25 A McDonald's coloring contest and the decision to be an artist

09:26 Graphic design, and what it costs to be a visual artist

11:59 Finding her voice through spoken word poetry

14:00 Performing overseas, and the limits of the English language

20:23 The Red Chador: Paris, 2015

23:00 Charlie Hebdo and the burqa ban

27:08 Spiritual Turmoil

30:11 A Cambodian Muslim family in America

35:43 Marriage, children, and making art anyway

38:45 See the Buddhist Bug in Los Angeles: September 26, wear orange