Her celebrated work Beast Type Song, a large-scale video installation was first shown at Tate Britain. Shot in the elegantly derelict former campus of Central Saint Martin’s School of Art in London which appears as a place neither in the past nor future, a different texture from what we know, immersing us in science-fiction. The video features filmmaker Yumna Marwan, actress Elizabeth Peace, and performance artist Tosh Basco, and serves as both a network of personal histories of colonial erasure and a call to arms, conveyed through monologue, conversation, and dance. Parts of the video are separated by an asterisk, a typographic sign that denotes a link to a source or a correction. The asterisk might well be called Al-Maria’s weapon of choice: through a relentless series of detours she presents an argument against complicity in the mainstream narratives of history.

Courtesy of the artist, Anna Lena Films, Paris and Project Native Informant, London