Solo Show of Yasmeen Abdallah

Yasmeen Abdallah’s intermingling installations form the parallel dimension of Opalite Bone, Velvet Marrow, Pearlescent Sinew. Part metaphor, part diaristic, this subterranean grotto represents a living, breathing organism in a world and timeline congruent to our own. Here, the bodily form functions in fight or flight within the greater suffocation of the body politic. Microbes burrow, cells regenerate, scar tissue overgrowth mingles with deadened skin. Within this cauldron, the reduction porridge of scrap fabric and mass plastic serves as makeshift ointment to calm the raw tissue that bleeds through the surface. Scaly textures meld with soft and sometimes supple forms that comfort and confound. The outward impacts the inward, and vice versa. The health of the individual depends on the health of its environment intrinsically. Toxic lands poison bodies.

 The artist painstakingly transposes the discarded, the found, and the salvaged into new forms that mimic the scars carried through life. To compose, the artist must first scavenge and decompose like the fauna and micro-organisms essential to any ecosystem. Abdallah uses her bed as a desk to tinker with mass-produced refuse; accordingly, her cats dictate her workflow. Individualism cedes to collectivity. Product surrenders to process. Ingenuity marries instinct. In a hard-fought organic collaboration, the cats call the shots and remind their mortal human that they are the masters of the realm. The shredded threads betray the paw of feline overlords, mimicking the exhaustive cycle of rebuilding amidst tyrants. The resulting creatures plumb the biomorphic and reach deeper than Humanism into a mythocratic past which may help navigate out of our technocratic present.  

Completing their life cycle between outside and at home, the artworks are now brought to life in the shared space of an exhibition. These talismans hold vigil from the gallery walls and anxiously watch over the public through the front window. Looking out onto the bustling city, their place of origin, these sentries surveil for danger and threats to their autonomy. They are oracles of past and future, stewards of intimate and public space, and healers radiating mystical care.