Coaxial Arts Foundation is thrilled to announce San Diego-based queer Muslim Egyptian sculpture artist Yasmine K. Kasem as our August 2023 Artist in Residence.
Yasmine K. Kasem will present, “The Philosophers are Incoherent.” A site-specific installation and collaborative activation featuring recent and new textile and fiber series which investigate intersections of identity, religion, love and conflict from the perspective of a Queer Egyptian and Muslim artist from the Midwest.
Drop-in collaborative felting sessions
Wednesday August 9th, 2:00PM to 6:00PM
Thursday August 10th, 2:00PM to 6:00PM
Opening Reception
Saturday August 12th, 5:00PM to 9:00PM
Gallery Open Hours
Saturday August 12th, 5:00PM to 9:00PM
Sunday August 13th, 1:00PM to 6:00PM
RSVP at Withfriends
Yasmine Kasem Kasem’s art focuses on the precariousness within the layers of identity and what it is to be Egyptian – American, Muslim and Queer. Born and raised in central Indiana, she received her BFA in Sculpture from Herron School of Art and Design at IUPUI in 2015 and her MFA in Visual Arts at the University of California San Diego in 2019. Kasem has exhibited regionally and internationally and has work in private and public collections, such as the San Diego Civic Art Collection. Select exhibitions include “In the Adjacent Possible” at the John Michael Kohler Art Center, WI 2023 and in SPRING/ BREAK NAKED LUNCH, LA Art Fair 2023, Visions and Nightmares at Simone Subal Gallery, New York, NY 2021. ‘middle’ at bread and Salt San Diego 2022. Masricani 2018, at the San Juan Island Museum of Art in San Juan, WA. Mwasah 2018 in Santa Ana, CA. and Happening 2018 in Tijuana, MX. Kasem has been artist in residence at Bread and Salt Gallery San Diego 2021, and 1805 Gallery in San Diego in 2019.
“The more truths I experience, the less I feel I understand. I am fascinated by the relationships of contradictions and navigating the ones imposed upon me and observed upon others. Embracing the few truths we can only know through experience and the incomprehensible. Through independant series of works that traverse historical, pop-cultural, religious and autobiographical topics, I am investigating various aspects of love, conflict and the incomprehensibility of the divine by unraveling identity and self understanding. The Philosophers are Incoherent will feature recent and new appliqué textile and felted fiber series that investigate intersections of identity, religion, love and conflict from the perspective of a Queer Egyptian and Muslim artist from the Midwest..
..I explore the inherent tension between presence and absence through the use of liminal materials such as Egyptian cotton, thread, and natural dyes. As a queer Muslim Egyptian woman, I am intimately familiar with in-betweenness and use my artistic practice to give visibility and shape to my existence and desires in the context of a mainstream that would deny me. My work in both materiality and subject is designed to insist upon presence in the face of enforced absence so that one is not forced to choose among and between mutually exclusive binaries but can have a “home” in the inbetween space.”
-Yasmine K. Kasem, 2023
