Yasmina Assbane lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. She has a bachelor’s degree in higher artistic education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. She is a teacher for secondary school at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, where she previously completed a higher education in art.
In 2004 and 2005 she took part in the Art Brussels Contemporary Art Fair on behalf of the Pascal Retelet Gallery (Olivier Meessen). She had been part of many exhibitions in Greece, in Belgium in Ghent (SMAAK, curator by Ben Benaouisse), Mons, Charleroi and Tournai and took part in a residency at MAAC.
She received several awards and grants: Charles Buls, Leg Serrure, Tournai City Prize, Young Artists of the French Community Parliament. Her works are included in both private and public collections (Brussels Parliament).
More on her website: Yasmina Assbane
August residency in Bucharest
”My residency in Bucharest was a real “coup de Coeur”, the second time I’d been to Romania.
This time I was able to really appreciate the importance of contemporary art in Bucharest in particular, through meetings with artists, studio visits, gallery shows and exhibitions in the various art museums, whether contemporary or ancient.
Architecture was also a source of inspiration, as it bears witness, like objects or fiber, to an era and the place occupied by women in it.
The relationship I forged with Adelina Ivan, who welcomed me into her studio for the duration of the residency, greatly facilitated my access to the cultural life of Romania and Bucharest in particular.
We were able to exchange ideas on the artists’ career paths, with a view to making their work better known. She shared her experience with me, and we exchanged views on our respective practices. My project focused on the question of identity, from a feminist point of view.
So it’s in a gendered everyday life that I’m testing the capacity of certain elements of material life to be part of an artistic research process. By material life, I mean “what makes up a material environment for women, what is assigned to them materially, what is left to them. I collected everyday objects used by Romanian women in second-hand stores and markets.
Using the skills of local seamstresses, I created 3 silhouettes in polyester fiber. A dialogue is to be established between the silhouettes and the objects.
Their plasticity, as well as their tension and/or balance, are questioned in close connection with the question of the device (borrowed from the art of display, the assembly is often unattached, light and dismountable, sometimes in balance, it appeals to the very feminine notion of “arranging things”.
It’s a device that doesn’t force anything, but rather favors arrangement.”
Thank you to Anca Poterasu Gallery, Adelina Ivan, the Italian Cultural Center and all the people I met during this residency, who have enriched my thinking and my artistic practice.
The AFAR Network project is co-funded by the European Union: ”Views and opionions expressed are however those of the autohor(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsable for them.”