The Dreamy work of Aala Oni :: Artist interview

Agent Peach -

Great to connect here, Aala! I’ve been watching your progress and process since we met in Colombia a couple of years ago!! Can you tell us a little about your work and how long you’ve been painting? Where did you begin to paint? Did you get a formal education as an artist or are you self taught?

Aala OnI -

I’ve been painting since I was about 16, which I discovered through an elective art class in high school. I've always been an artist at heart -- writing poetry, creating collages and little trinket sculptures from found material -- but high school was when I really began to notice the level of joy that visual art had given me. I hated assignments but I loved the finish product. I loved bending my mind and challenging the ways in which I looked at things in order to bring these insights to life. I didn't take it too seriously in high school, I was deeply in love with basketball. I was the captain of my team and was also running track, which took up so much of my time, so I didn't really have time to pour into generating work, nor did I even give myself a chance to realize that's what I wanted. however -- after a long dabble in psychology, I did go on to attend California College of the Arts in San Francisco, on a scholarship in 2019. That was the most subversive experience in my art career at that point, and I wish I would've stayed longer. It wasn't so much about the technical/formal training as it was about the belonging, the mentorship, and the cerebral stimulation.

I dropped out in 2020 due to covid and the shift to "online learning", which I felt was incredibly counterproductive for my practice personally, I am forever grateful for that experience and everyone I had met along the way at CCA.

Overall i'd say I am pretty much self taught, and I think that fuels my experimentation in my work. 

My art is a site of reckoning, remembrance, and return. It is how I metabolize lived experience, both my own and those inherited through lineage, history, and collective memory. Creating allows me to move grief, desire, rage, pleasure, and devotion through the body and into material form. The work becomes a living archive, holding what could not be safely carried internally any longer. At its core, my practice is about ritual reclamation and survival. I am drawn to the spaces where spirituality becomes embodied, where the sacred is messy, visceral, and deeply human. Through mixed media, sculpture, and ceremonial performance, I explore Black femme identity, sexuality, and power as sites of both vulnerability and resistance. I am interested in what happens when the body is honored as an archive—when bodily residue, repetition, and ritual are allowed to speak alongside text and object. Emotionally, the work holds tenderness and rupture at the same time. It is intimate, confrontational, and often uncomfortable by design. I aim to create environments that ask viewers to slow down, to witness, and to feel their own proximity to the narratives present. Rather than offering resolution, I invite collective processing—space for accountability, release, and recognition of our interconnectedness.

AP -

I love what you just shared! I can’t believe that I never thought about folks in art school, specifically, during the pandemic.

How do you get into your process? What is your ritual around getting into a space to create?

AO -

I think it's pretty simple -- I have to put myself in a headspace where art can be generated. I have to unplug from the social world and tap into the cerebral world. I enjoy being in complete solitude, with all my things. maybe open a bottle of wine, or make myself a sake cocktail. I like to turn on either a MUBI doc or a Pharaoh Sanders album, or Alice Coltrane discography and really sit with what these articles of inspiration draw out of me. I also think making work in itself is a ritual for me. it's always been an active collaboration with my ancestors. a private sermon between myself and them.

AP -

What do you think is your biggest inspiration for painting right now? What are you drawing from?

AO -

I would say my biggest inspiration for painting is the same as always -- i'm ciphering through internal conversations. I’m a very curious person. Questions that cannot be answered usually drive my work. I guess I would describe the commentary as psycho-social-political. These questions often surround social constructs and how they show up and operate in our current states of existing with one another.

AP -

That being said, I think your work is more important than ever right now…

You have been to quite a few places to exhibit and show your pieces in the last few years!

Is there one that stuck out for you in particular? Did one place share a direction or help to start a new pathway for you in your painting… If it did?

AO -

I have thoroughly enjoyed every place I've ever spent time in and created work for, or while there. They have all come at different points in my life where I needed to be there to navigate whatever was happening internally and externally alike, so they are all uniquely special to me.

I would say my time in Colombia and the South of France came with two completely different environments, but ultimately had the same effect on my productivity and discipline as an artist. I was an artist in residence in the South of France first -- Beaumont-de-Pertuis in Provence -- there for a month and created two large bodies of work, one which sold shortly after my arrival back in the states. I spent a lot of time in solitude during this residency, constantly in the studio with nothing but a $2 bottle of rosé, a fresh baguette, and some salami. The town was incredibly small and quaint, it was probably the quietest place I have ever lived! The beauty of the South of France was so enamoring that I was forced to be present, with limited distractions from the outside world, and create work that really spoke to me. The silence was extremely inspiring. I could finally hear myself clearly.

Colombia was sort of similar -- being nestled away in the mountains of Cundinamarca -- in the sense that I had little distractions. I was there for 2 months and I had no signal so I couldn't really use my phone, and I really didn't care too. This residency was much more communal, though. We ate every meal together at the same time everyday. We met for critiques and community activities to connect and unwind, but the most meaningful and pivotal part for me was the schedule we all sort of unspokenly created, to get up every morning and get in the studio together after breakfast. It was something that gave me structure, kept me accountable, and also felt like a community bind, in the best way. I created 7 pieces of work within that 2 month period, and have made lifelong connections with the other artists. Both of these places will forever hold incomparable places in my heart.

AP -

Well, I am so happy we met in Colombia! I do plan to stay in touch!.

Do you have any dreams of places you want to visit to exhibit or create this year and beyond?

AO -

Well, I would be grateful to exhibit my work anywhere that extends a warm invitation to me of course!

I love global travel and experiencing different cultures, and finding inspiration in the lineages and practices that are birthed in these lands. But I do have visions of spending quite some time and creating a body of work in Ghana. 

AP - What is Maison OnI? I have been seeing you post a bit about it on Instagram.

What do you hope to accomplish with the launch of this project?

AO -

Maison Oni is essentially the makings of a third space for Black and brown artists and intellectuals to communion, create, and speak about topics in a safe space of empowerment, with generative resources and mentorship.

I hope to give artists a platform that garners a sense of belonging, infinite support, and saturated and substantial material for and by US.

===

Thanks for this great interview. Super lovely to drop in so deeply, Aala! I’m excited to keep watching and I hope we get to work together in the future.

💗, Agent Peach