Yasmin Sharabi

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Echo. Pencil and Graphite on Card

The Centre

Yasmin believes that over the past year she has felt a profound shift in her self- awareness and attributes this partially to becoming a yoga teacher. In the recent past she was so affected by the distractions of her external environment which prevented her from truly knowing herself. Recently, she has turned inward and has come to realize that in order to better understand our world, we should better understand ourselves.

Through meditative labyrinths and sacred mandalas, Yasmin contemplates existence.  All elements coexist and despite their being ‘walls’ to define certain areas, each circle flows free of obstacles, ultimately leading you to the central, unification point.

Yasmin draws parallels between the symbolism of these circles and the state of society as a whole. Society has erected distractive ‘walls’- manifestations of our egoistic beliefs and desires- and these man-made barriers lead us astray- they isolate us from nature, divide societies and sometimes entire nations.  In other words, in order to achieve harmony, to better our world both internally and externally, we must dissolve the walls that our egos have erected around us.

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Diligently exploring issues related to her identity, Yasmin Sharabi’s work is often a poignant examination of her disparate upbringing. Being of American and Palestinian origin but having lived most of her life in Bahrain, Yasmin has grown to acknowledge the significant affect of one’s disconnection to land and place in influencing the development of the self. She feels as if it is this detachment that has prompted her questioning of societal and cultural norms and the limits that are enforced upon us. In her quest to understand her own identity, her imagery often appears dream-like; alluding to scenes from memory, suggestive of a longing for place.

Yasmin Sharabi was born in Athens, Greece in 1981. Her family relocated to Bahrain in 1989 where they continue to reside. She obtained a BA in Studio Art/Art History from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada in 2004 and an MA in Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London, UK in 2006. She currently lives and works in Bahrain.

www.cargocolletive.com/yasminsharabi