From Beirut and Alexandria to Ramallah: Palestinian artist showcases “sparkling cities by the sea”

Jerusalem24 – “I am the kind of artist to believe in art as a language by itself,” says Inass Yassin. “Like when you talk about music – you experience music as a language before looking into what content it carries.”

Inass speaks as a Palestinian studio artist and exhibitions curator. Her latest exhibition of her own work, “Sparkling Cities”, is currently hosted at Al-Zawyeh Gallery in Ramallah.

Inass believes art is about enriching the visual field that she lives in, and trying to create and reconstruct pictures within that field.

“I believe for me the urge has been always to create, to make pictures,” she tells Jerusalem24, “to look at the surroundings [of] your city and street, and try to create pictures that you don’t find in the visual field that you have.”

Is this what inspires her as an artist?

“Everything in your surroundings can be an inspiration,” she assets. “Once you have a trained and sensitive eye you can use any experience as an inspiration.”

Sparkling cities by the sea

Sparkling Cities (with the word “sparkling” somehow inviting and attracting people, says Inass) quite literally showcases cities – albeit Inass’ own version of these cities, how she sees and imagines them, and how they inevitably evolve over time.

“I work in creating pictures and images that deals with stages of transformation within these cities,” she explains.

The cities and themes that populate Inass’ exhibit are all drawn from Arab cities that she personally experienced.

“Some of the iconic images of a city like Beirut, for example, has been one of the themes that I produced in some of the works exhibited in this show.”

Beirut is significant for more than one reason: it is also a city by the sea, which, like Alexandria, “is dominant in the work that I am exhibiting.”

If the cities are sparkling, so is the water by which they stand, Inass reminds us…

The Sparkling Cities exhibition runs from 29 April to 24 June at Al-Zawyeh Gallery.

Listen to the full interview on Vibes.