Ali True (née Naschke-Messing) is a native Californian, currently living in San Francisco. She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and an MFA from California College of the Arts, with a focus in textiles. She was awarded an Affiliate Artist position at the Headlands Center for the Arts from 2011-2013, was selected as an Emerging Artist by the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art in 2012, and was an Irvine Fellow at the Montalvo Arts Center in 2010.  She has recently shown at the de Saisset Museum, Museum of Craft and Design (SF), Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, RedCat, Artadia, Pro Arts, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, San Jose Institute for Contemporary Art, Montalvo Arts Center, The Headlands, College of Marin, and San Francisco State University, among others.

True is primarily a site-responsive installation artist. She creates spatially quiet moments and reminds us to look carefully at what surrounds us. She explores architecture with thread, gold, and light to highlight unseen forms and engage with other dimensions.  She enjoys the freedom of working across disciplines, using various media and materials. True has created several large outdoor installations, and used sound, video, and performance over the course of her career. Interested in participation, she includes other people’s stories in her projects, and considers viewers’ movements to be part of the final work. She shows locally and nationally, and her work is in various private collections.