Elyas Alavi is a multi-disciplinary visual artist and poet based in Adelaide, South Australia. He is primarily working in the form of painting, installation, video and performance art. Alavi was born in Daikundi province, Afghanistan, and moved to Iran as a child, following the intensification of war in his homeland and in late 2007 he moved to Australia as refugee at risk.
Alavi has graduated from a Masters by Research (Visual Arts) in 2016 and a Bachelor of Visual Arts in 2012 at the University of South Australia and has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally including at Mohsen Gallery (Tehran), IFA Gallery (Kabul), Firstdraft (Sydney), Chapter House Lane (Melbourne), Feltspace (Adelaide), Jugglers Art Space (Brisbane), UTS Art (Sydney) and Nexus Arts (Adelaide).
Alavi also is best known as an internationally renowned poet. He published 3 poetry books in Farsi. First poetry book “I’m a daydreamer wolf” published in 2008 in Tehran (5th edition in 2016), followed by “Some wounds” in 2012 in Kabul and “Hodood” in 2015 in Tehran. He regularly runs art and poetry workshops in community centres and schools in Adelaide.
Alavi has received number of awards for his art and poetry including International Samstag Award (2019), Next Wave Festival Artist Recipient (2018), International Peace Poetry Prize -Simorgh- (2011-Kabul) and Young Poets’ Book of the Year (2008- Tehran).
Alavi visits various issues in his works, but mainly memory, migration, displacement, exile, gender issues, separation and the human nature. The main part of his work as an artist reflects upon his Hazara background (a marginalised ethnic group originally from Afghanistan) as he uses his particular experiences and contemplations as an epistemological model for the dislocation of peoples.