Culturally relevant design is at the heart of my practice. With a foundation in graphic design and interdisciplinary research, I view design as more than visual communication; it is a system that shapes perception, controls narrative, and influences how we understand identity, history, and power.
Education
2025-27 Masters of Fine Arts – Design
Rutgers University (RU), Mason Gross School of Arts, New Brunswick, NJ
2018 Bachelor of Fine Arts
Austin Peay State University (APSU), Clarksville, TN
Employment
Teaching Assistant at Rutger’s University
Facilitate the development of emerging
designers through technical instruction in Adobe Creative Suite and
critical mentorship during the transition from conceptual research to
professional exhibition.
Clients
Gaza Funds
Lambda Literary
Asian American Writer’s Workshop
Renascence Books
Skills
Illustration
Collage
Adobe Suite
Meeting Facilitation
Website Support
HTML Coding
E-commerce
SquareSpace
WordPress
Figma
Publicity
Editorial
Canva
META apps
Processing
Social Media Management
Selected Exhibitions
2025 Contributor to Instigator’s Handbook, curated by Alice Yard, Kochi Biennale, Kerala, India
2024 Queering Democracy, juried exhibition, Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo), Rochester, NY
Watermelon Seeds, Begonia Laboratory, Engine for Arts, Democracy, and Justice (EADJ), Nashville, TN
2022 We Are Sorry to Inform You That, Adele Jarrar + MNFA, Amman, Jordan
Awards
2024–25 National Leaders of Color Fellowship 2024-25, selected by South Arts, “a nonprofit regional arts organization empowering artists,” Atlanta, GA. Curated by Creative West, Denver Colorado
2024 Nominated and awarded for Press On Southern Movement Media Fund
Press
2025 Michael Hambouz and Ali El-Chaer Strike a Balance in Gazala Projects Exhibition, Matter News, Dayton, OH
Random Sample Gazette, Random Sample, Nashville, TN
2024 A Space for Collective Grieving and Solidarity in Nashville, Nashville Banner, Nashville, TN
Begonia Labs Is a Safe Space for ‘Watermelon Seeds’, Nashville Scene, Nashville, TN
2023 International Waters, Moyé Magazine, South Africa, Johannesburg
2022 Issue No. 9, The Hen Collective, Edinburgh, UK
Ali El-Chaeralielchaerart@gmail.com | https://linktr.ee/AlielchaerartTextText Walls
2026
Text walls is mini-series using Adobe Illustrator, using simple words like “life” or “nu-uh” to build a wall. These are reminisent of childhood wallpapers, screens doors, and buffers of different frustrations through life. By rendering these domestic memories as rigid, typographic "walls," the series explores how childhood comforts can evolve into the linguistic buffers we use to navigate adult frustration and emotional stagnation.
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od wallpapers or screen doors.Text
walls is mini-series using Adobe Illustrator, using simple words like
“life” or “nu-uh”Text walls is mini-series using Adobe Illustrator, using simple words like “life” or “nu-uh” to build a wall. These are reminisent of childhood wallpapers, screens doors, and buffers of different frustrations through liTwalls is mini-series using Adobe Illustrator, using simple words like “life” or “nu-uh” to build a wall. These are reminisent of childhood wallpapers, screens doors, and buffers of different frustrations through life. By rendering these domestic memories as rigid, typographic "walls," the series explores how childhood comforts can evolve into the linguistic buffers we use to navigate adult frustration and emotional stagnation.
Love Letters Folio
2023
The Love Letters folio, edited by Yi Wei, brings together twelve pieces
of flash that capture several different perspectives, angles, and
actions on loving in the world. “Rather than thinking about each of the
stories in this folio as purely love stories, I ask you to consider how
they use love to negotiate more difficult considerations about living in
the world,” writes Yi Wei.
“About the Art: Love Letters” by Yi Wei and Ali El-Chaer Banned Books
2025
“Patrick Vincent and Ali El-Chaer’s collaborative book visualize’s El-Chaer’s original poem ‘Banned Books.’ The poem and its visualization reacts to historic and contemporary violence, colonialism, and oppression related to the restriction of writing and access to books.”
–Unbannable Library Project
Banned books, banned bodies
10% of a population gone
10 months of being unwritten—
Or not written at all—
No words, no numbers
Could hold all this silence.
A religion foreign to our lands,
Controlling our history.
And those who forget their history
Are doomed to repeat it
And, perhaps this time,
Those who are allowed to remember
will perfect it.
Bombing, bombing, bombing,
And the displacement never stops.
You remove my people
from the screens
And do not talk of
our banned books
Or the books that never made it
to the shelf.
Spines thrown across the streets,
Hands clutching the warning,
Pulling the memory...
And go to the prisons of
our new state library!
Banned books, banned bodies,
Banned people, banned homelands
And whose morality is this anyway?
The chosen people?
The revolution not televised,
not spoken
Sewn Black lips,
Ziptied hands,
Gassed while crossing
the colonizer’s border,
Savages with the
same red beating hearts
as all of us,
asking:
“What about our stories?
Will we all be banned together?”
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