Based in Quetta, Pakistan and born to parents of an Afghan minority group, Ali studied miniature painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore. He uses those traditional techniques to portray contemporary society in his art. During his residency in 2007, he made an acquaintance with a woman from Europe who had left her daughter behind to work in Japan. This led to a video piece in which the woman is asked to sing lullabies in her native language, as well as miniature paintings based on that encounter. Ali had come to Japan before through the AIR program of the Fukuoka Asian Museum. He has shown work at such venues as the Asia Pacific Triennale (2006) and dOCUMENTA 13 (2012). For this exhibition, he presents new miniature paintings related to the work at dOCUMENTA 13.