Yasmine Dabbous
If You Leave Under Fire, What Would You Take with You?
Saturday, February 4–Sunday, February 26, 2023

Amputated from their former lives, refugees find themselves—to borrow from Albert Camus—diverted from their selfness. They leave the territories of their ancestors, in hope to find safety in new and unknown destinations. On these assiduous journeys, they cling to material objects they carry with them all the way from home.

These foundation objects acquire a practical and conceptual importance larger than life. They promote survival and livelihood. They defy loss to preserve the refugee’s identity as well as their humanity. Remnants of a former reality, objects create critical connections between past and future, in an elusive present.

In this exhibition, artist Yasmine Dabbous uses fiber arts and jewelry design to celebrate these consequential objects. Her hand-embroidered miniature mattresses project actual objects grabbed by refugees in twelve countries across four continents. The mattresses themselves hail yet another rooted mast for these tired lives on the move.

Underlying this celebration, where home becomes a trivial object, is a commentary about the collapse of humanity. Despite massive strides in cybernetics and genetics, civilization faces moral defeat when it fails to avert conflict, multiple refugee crises and millions of lives shattered.

About the artist:

Yasmine Dabbous, PhD, is a visual culture artist and researcher from Beirut, Lebanon.

Dabbous chiefly uses fiber arts and jewelry design to comment on contemporary socio-cultural issues, of pertinence to our globalized communities. Dabbous is influenced by her upbringing in a tumultuous region, her academic interests rooted in interdisciplinary methodologies, and a solid training in storytelling.

After a long career in journalism and journalism education, Dabbous left her professorial position at the Lebanese American University to study textile design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Today, her portfolio includes gallery and museum exhibitions in New York City, Washington DC, London and Beirut.

Dabbous is the founder of Kinship Stories, a line of tribal art necklaces that celebrate cultures. She is also the co-founder of Espace Fann, a Beirut-based creative space teaching formal art and design.

Dabbous has widely lectured and written about the healing impact of textile art and its role in building bridges across communities.