Raed Yassin: the impossible works of Raed Yassin

Language: English

Five curators take part in a performance that employs strategies of forgery, fabulation, and factuality to realize through the medium of speech works that are “impossible” to execute. Each of the curators occupies a separate room in the space and describes, theorizes, and narrates the conception, features, and context of an invisible artwork. By omitting different details and altering the description with every iteration, the curators offer limitless permutations of projects that are materially absent.

Yassin’s proposal seeks to activate a collaborative speculation about the future of curatorial practices and the potentialities of conversation between artist and curator. By collapsing some of the formal, political, and epistemological tropes of curating and artistic production into an oral modality, the curator as a meta-artist and the artist as a meta-curator engage. The audience becomes actor in a game of imagination, persuasion, and deception.

The participating curators are Amanda Abi Khalil, Kyla McDonald, Nat Muller, Rasha Salti, and Eline Van Der Vlist.

This performance is supported by the young Arab theatre fund.

Raed Yassin was born in Beirut in 1979. He graduated from the theatre department at the institute of fine arts in Beirut in 2003. An artist and musician, Yassin’s work often originates from an examination of his personal narratives and their workings within a collective history, through the lens of consumer culture and mass production. He has exhibited and performed his work in numerous museums, festivals, and venues across Europe, the middle east, the united states, and Japan, including the new museum in New York (2012), “Sharjah Biennial 10” (2011), Delfina Foundation in London (2010-2011) where he has completed a residency program, “Manifesta 8” in Murcia (2010-2011), centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (2011), de – ateliers in Amsterdam following a 2-year residency, “home works 5” in Beirut, (2010) and photo Cairo 4 (2008). Yassin was awarded the Fidus prize for the best of Sammy Clark at Beirut art center’s exposure(2009), the Abraaj capital art prize (2012), the Afac grant for production (2010), the YATF grant for production (2008 & 2012) and the cultural resource grant for production (2008). Yassin is one of the organizers of Irtijal festival, and has released 11 music albums, and founded the production company Annihaya in 2009. He is also a founding member of “Atfal Ahdath” a Beirut-based art collective. He currently lives and works in Beirut and is represented by Kalfayan Galleries (Athens – Thessaloniki).