Dancing, Smoking, Kissing

2013 | Embroidery series | Variable dimensions

Works

Another Birthday, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 80 x 100 cm

By the Sea, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 60 x 90 cm

Christmas Eve, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 60 x 90 cm

Dad in London, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 75 x 105 cm

Dad Smoking, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 100 x 80 cm

Dancing, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 85 x 85 cm

Family Portrait with Peacock, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 90 x 110 cm

Flying Kid, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 85 x 75 cm

Gentleman Raed, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 80 x 60 cm

In Baalbek, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 110 x 85 cm

Kissing 1, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 70 x 100 cm

Kissing 2, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 70 x 100 cm

Mama Mira, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 105 x 95 cm

Mama with Baloons, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 100 x 100 cm

Naked Doll, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 80 x 80 cm

Paper Bag Masik, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 90 x 110 cm

Raed Smoking, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 90 x 70 cm

Raed the Sindbad, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 85 x 60 cm

Reading Letters, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 85 x 105 cm

The Birthday, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 75 x 105 cm

Third Birthday, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 75 x 110 cm

With Imad Hamdi, Silk thread embroidery on embroidered silk cloth, 75 x 110 cm

Raed Yassin literally, and mechanically, reproduces the visual fabric of his childhood memories in a series of embroideries in Dancing, Smoking, Kissing. He takes the viewer on a pictorial walk down memory lane by threading together the mental images of his childhood with their disappeared photographic representations. We are all familiar with family photo albums and how they look and feel. They are universal, yet private, mementos that document sometimes big, but mostly small and mundane instances of family togetherness. Most of Yassin’s family photographs were lost over time through incessant moving, displacement, and in other ways. What remains of these lost images is not only the memory of the event, such as a birthday or dress-up party, a picnic at the beach, a kiss in a nightclub, a holiday abroad, but also the memory of the actual photographs that chronicled family life. Born into a family of tailors Yassin sets out to reconstruct these disappeared and abandoned images on computer-embroidered textiles that incorporate his own recollection, those of family members, and the leaps and gaps of his imagination. Colourful, intimate and ornamental these embroideries simultaneously emit a sensibility of domesticity while also retaining a mass-produced and mechanised feel, which to an extent dilutes the highly personal element of the project. In Dancing, Smoking, Kissing Yassin never succeeds in fully reconstructing or retrieving the original image, if there ever was one to start with, instead he provides us with the stitched material rendition of memory.
Text By Nat Muller

Exhibition views - A Feeling in Perspective, Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde 2016 - photos by Musthafa Aboobacker
Exhibition views - Leighton House Museum London, 2015 - photos by Kevin Moran

Exhibition views

Exhibition view, Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde, 2016

Exhibition view, Leighton House Museum, 2015