Anida Yoeu Ali: The Buddhist Bug
09/26/2026 - 05/22/2027
OPENING RECEPTION: Saturday, September 26, 2026
Anida Yoeu Ali’s The Buddhist Bug is an expansive performance project that brings together myth, humor, spiritual inquiry, and the lived experience of displacement. At its center is a monumental saffron-colored creature, nearly 328 feet in length, with a human face tightly framed in cloth at one end and a pair of feet at the other. Activated through performance, photography, and video, The Buddhist Bug moves through markets, temples, streets, rural landscapes, and other social spaces across Cambodia.
The work reflects Ali’s complex relationship to Cambodia, diasporic memory, and transnational belonging. Its brilliant orange evokes Buddhist monks’ robes, while the cloth surrounding the Bug’s female face recalls the hijab and points to the Cham Muslim community, an ethnic and religious minority in Cambodia to which Ali and her family belong. Through this layered form, Ali considers visibility and erasure, faith and cultural difference, homeland and exile.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Anida Yoeu Ali (b. 1974, Battambang, Cambodia) is an interdisciplinary artist working across performance, installation, video, new media, public encounters, and social practice. Born in Cambodia and raised in Chicago, Ali is a first-generation American of Malay, Cham, Khmer, and Thai ancestry. Her work examines faith, migration, race, gender, and political history through larger-than-life personas that challenge inherited narratives and restrictive representations.
Ali received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a recipient of the 2020 Art Matters Fellowship and the 2015 Sovereign Asian Art Prize in Hong Kong, and is the co-founder of Studio Revolt, an independent artist-run media lab. She currently lives and works in Tacoma, Washington.
IMAGES
Anida Yoeu Ali, Secret Lagoon,The Buddhist Bug Series, Digital C print, 2014. Photo by Vinh Dao. © Studio Revolt. Image courtesy of the artist.
Anida Yoeu Ali, Campus Dining,The Buddhist Bug Series, 2012. Photo by Masahiro Sugano. © Studio Revolt. Image courtesy of the artist.
Anida Yoeu Ali, Roll Call,The Buddhist Bug Series, Archival inkjet print, 2014. Photo by Vinh Dao. © Studio Revolt. Image courtesy of the artist.
Anida Yoeu Ali, Live Performance Still of The Buddhist Bug, Seattle Asian Art Museum, 2024.
Photo by Art Kuniyuki. Image courtesy of the artist.
Acknowledgements
Anida Yoeu Ali: The Buddhist Bug is organized by the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College. The exhibition is co-curated by Sonia Mak, executive director, Asian Arts Initiative, and Steven Wong, director, Vincent Price Art Museum.
The exhibition is made possible with lead support from The Mike Kelley Foundation.
Additional support for the exhibition is provided by Pasadena Art Alliance.
All exhibitions and programs are underwritten by the Vincent Price Art Museum Foundation and East Los Angeles College.