Refracted FuturesPhoto Series
2024–50257

REFRACTED FUTURES (5025) is a series of portraits of individuals wrapped in Mylar. Mylar is a synthetic material created by DuPont in the 1950s, and later developed by NASA for astronauts to use during space travel. One side is silver, and the other side has a gold sheen. Mylar is commonly used as blankets to retain body heat, which is essential in sub-zero temperatures of outer space. In contemporary society, these blankets are distributed to migrants and refugees; news feeds are filled with images of these displaced peoples shrouded in Mylar.

This parallel use draws the comparison of what it means to travel vertically and/or to travel horizontally, into different worlds or spaces. Mental and physical spaces. REFRACTED FUTURES explores how a photograph might occupy a space that is both horizontal—linear—and vertical. How movement occurs along both of these axes simultaneously, this is the point of origin.

Wrapped in Mylar, these individuals are migrants not only in terms of physical space and movement, but space and time. The series is dated in 5025, three thousand years from now. They are posed and marked in ways that the artist imagines Yemeni space travelers would be. Much of Alia Ali’s work of Yemeni Futurism is rooted in the  time of Belqis, or the Queen of Sheba, who reigned three thousand years in the past. What once existed as an empire has now become something very dystopian, yet fast forward three thousand years and it will become something radical and beautiful. Imagine what that world will be. These individuals have traveled through space and through time, their dignity intact, their futures bright.

Ali defines the series’ methodology as drawing with light. Which is the etymological source of photography itself: photo meaning light, and graph meaning to draw. So if a photograph is drawing with light, it is a fallacy to consider photography as one of the youngest art forms. If we go back in time before the invention of the camera, creators have been drawing with light for thousands of years. For example, the act of making fabrics requires light, as well as water and printing blocks. These works were made using three different types of light: sunlight, black light, and white (studio) light, all illuminating at the same time.The resulting images are thus not quite saturated. Unlike unsaturated black and white, or monotone, there is actual color exposed under these three forms of light.

Each work is composed of two layers of glass; one is museum-quality glass, and the other is dichroic glass. The latter contains micro layers of metal oxides with different refraction indices, resulting in shifts in color depending upon the angle of view. Early Roman era examples of this effect involved adding metal traces to melted glass; NASA reinterpreted the process in the 1950s and 60s for use in telescopes and spacecraft windows. Due to high toxicity levels, this mid-century dichroic glass has been replaced by the use of film filters on ordinary glass. The dome of Le Printemps in Paris is a well-known example of the use of dichroic filters.

Ali discovered a very rare cache of NASA’s original dichroic glass, and cut it down to 60 x 40 cm format. The images are printed onto the glass, then both layers are bound together by a polished aluminum band, and mounted on a shelf. When the light hits the piece, the viewer sees their reflection and fragments behind the glass, while the light splits into two different colors. Violet in the back, gold in the front. The effect transcends two-dimensional representation, as there is reflection as well as refraction. Imagine light traveling through a prism; one form of light enters and refracts outward into what becomes several, multiple colors.

In most photography there is an archival aspect. Ironically, light is required to make the photograph, but then light becomes the greatest threat to its conservation. The print must be protected under glass and kept away from the sun. This creates a barrier between the viewer and the work; anathema to Ali. In all of her work, the focus is on the frame, and the photograph is never hidden behind glass. In REFRACTED FUTURES, she embraces the glass, turning away from the frame to create a photographic sculpture.

The works are intended to interact with natural light. As the sun moves throughout the day, so does the light around it. The color shifts produced are also inspired by qamariya, or traditional Yemeni moon windows. These stained glass windows are placed high on the walls and doors of traditional Yemeni homes, creating an effect that is similar to the refractive properties of dichroism. Here the artist imagines the future evolution of photography, carrying the symbols of past and present into the future, transcending the plane to occupy space in a futuristic manifestation.

In Ali’s larger body of work, she refers to her subjects as -cludes, either excluded or included, in the sense of agency, or power. Here, the -cludes are figures from the future, people who have traveled over, land, sea, space and time. They are not migrants, but rather refugees, heroes, warriors, abtaal.

It is for the viewer to decide, contemplating their own reflection and the image of the refugee, where the power resides.

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1. The history of polyester film. Mylar Specialty Films. (2024, April 19). https://mylar.com/history-of-polyester-film/

2. NASA. (n.d.). Ultra-thin coatings beautify art. NASA. https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2012/cg_2.html