Raed Yassin
Amnesiac Commissions
Past
13 February – 29 March 2014
11 Haritos Street, Kolonaki
Kalfayan Galleries are pleased to present the second solo exhibition in their Athens space of the Lebanese artist Raed Yassin. Titled “Amnesiac Commissions” the exhibition will open on Thursday, 13 February 2014, 20.00 – 22.00.
Works of Raed Yassin, who is currently doing a residency at The Delfina Foundation in London, were recently exhibited at the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art and the Boghossian Foundation in Brussels. The artist’s solo exhibition, “Amnesiac Commissions” negotiates themes of personal and collective narrative and memory in an attempt to challenge a common survival tool, that of selective amnesia.
“Yassin Dynasty” consists of a series of porcelain works depicting several battles from the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) produced in Jingdezhen, the capital of porcelain production in China. The project is derivative from the work “China” (2012) that was made possible with the support of the Abraaj Group Art Prize. The “Yassin Dynasty” works are part-beautiful object, part-historical document, and part-mass-produced product. They echo the ancient tradition of recording victories at battle on vases and ceramics for the sake of posterity, and suggest that countless objects painted by different porcelain masters are being reproduced under the same fictional ‘dynasty’. The battles detailed on the exhibited works are ones that were instrumental for territorial, demographic and political shifts in Lebanon, and their ramifications are still tangible today. The works also embody the image of a Chinese decorative readymade object that could possibly be found in any Lebanese home. This merging between traditional, historical and artisanal elements creates a conceptually complex and multi-layered work.
Artists
Raed Yassin
Raed Yassin (b. 1979, Beirut, Lebanon) lives and works in Beirut. He graduated from the Theatre Department of the Institute of Fine Arts in Beirut in 2003.
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