Yasmin Hussein (b. London 1994) is an artist and curator working in the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds a BA in both Fine Art and the History of Art & Visual Culture from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has exhibited at galleries across the Bay Area and has worked with local art institutions such as the deYoung Museum, Southern Exposure and Adobe Books & Arts Cooperative where she was the Gallery Director from 2018-2019.
Solo Exhibitions
2020
SWEET & LOW | Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2016
Soft Edges | Sesnon Underground, Santa Cruz, CA
2015
Home is Not a Place I’m From | Eduardo Carrillo Gallery, Santa Cruz, CA
Education
University of California, Santa Cruz 2016
B.A. Studio Art and the History of Art & Visual Culture
Professional Experience
Gallery Director, Adobe Books, Aug 2018 - Dec 2019
Gallery Assistant, Adobe Books, Mar 2017 - Aug 2018
Artist Mentor, Southern Exposure, 2016-17 & 2017-18
Intern, de Young Museum, Mar - Aug 2016
Select Group Exhibitions
2020
Local Love | Online Exhibit with MUSEPOP
2019
Co-op Show | Adobe Books Backroom Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018
Boxed In | Open Windows Cooperative, San Francisco, CA
What is Free | Incline Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2017
Art Shop | Adobe Books, San Francisco, CA
2016
Artists Choice | SFWA | San Francisco, CA
BE GOOD | Lois Lambert Gallery | Santa Monica, CA
Fragments | Art Research Office | Santa Cruz, CA
No Regards | Hands Down Gallery | San Francisco, CA
Sanctuary | Bridge Gallery | Santa Cruz, CA
Pancakes & Booze | Minna Gallery | San Francisco, CA
2015
Desert Hearts Music Festival | Los Coyotes Indian Reservation, CA
Pancakes & Booze | Minna Gallery | San Francisco, CA
Politicized Minds | Art Bar | Santa Cruz, CA
Artist Statement:
Yasmin Hussein melds kitsch with her woodworking and metal fabrication practices to deconstruct gender norms and address gendered tensions that segregate these fields. She aims to blur the line between ‘craft art’ and ‘high art’ by incorporating everyday materials from craft and hardware stores in her paintings and sculptures. As a gender fluid, mixed race, first-generation immigrant, Yasmin is affected by the many multiplicities of identity and explores such in her work through the juxtaposition of specific materials and processes. She is focused on the inherent gendering of creative processes that has historically separated ‘domestic’ practices from construction, labor and what can be considered ‘high art.’ In using commonplace materials and processes that are relatable and recognizable, she creates abstract work that is easily accessible to audiences spanning all ages, identities and backgrounds.
Yasmin is influenced by the work of Alberto Burri, Womanhouse, the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s and Dadaism, but also finds inspiration in her career as an Arts Educator for children and youth. Through the use of tactile materials, bright colors and patterns her work evokes a childlike nostalgia that encourages the kind of raw and uninhibited imagination many people can remember from their childhood. Her work is feeling-based, material-driven and process-oriented, often directed by her own struggles with depression, anxiety and trauma. She creates as a means of managing her own mental health while also addressing the importance of mental health to others. She is interested in the assigned associations connected to certain materials and how they can be appropriated to ignite intimate feelings and memories. Her pieces and installations function as portals that transport viewers into their inner worlds where they can feel safe to explore their own feelings.