Ala Younis uses her research-led practice to seek instances where historical and political events collapse into personal ones. Her work examines issues of the modern day and what informs visual and popular culture—nationalism, didactic projects, political alliances, social movements, the emergence of global capital and personal and collective loss—through a multiplicity of voices. She adapts the language of architectural model making to study the early studio stagecraft and the interplay of nations, but also brings publishing efforts under the same lens of investigation. What investors, studios, currency fluctuations, subversive voices, and political crises shifted centers of cultural and political influence.

Ala Younis is an artist with curatorial, film and publishing projects. She presented her work in solo shows in Amman, Dubai, Sharjah, New York, London, Seville and Prague. She also participated in group exhibitions, including the biennials of Venice, Istanbul, Gwangju, Ljubljana, Kaunas, Ural and Orleans. She curated the first Kuwaiti Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (2013), the collection and interventions of the Museum of Manufactured Response to Absence (2012–2014), and co-curated the Singapore Biennale (2022). In 2012, Ala Younis co-founded Kayfa ta, an independent publishing initiative researching, exhibiting and publishing on and through independent publishing endeavors. She is co-section head of Berlinale's Forum Expanded, Artistic Director of Akademie der Kunst der Welt (Cologne), and Research Scholar at al Mawrid Arab Center for the Study of Art at New York University Abu Dhabi.