Her delicate frame deceives you. Her passion begins to emerge
when she talks about beingtorn away from the life she knew
in a painful marriage. Forced to face herself, stripped
of all sense of security, she confronted what she was, discarded
what shewas not. "I looked at myself in the mirror
and asked what I was capable of. Yasmin, now that you have
nothing, just what can you do? I can draw... and I began
from there."
Earning herself a scholarship at the University of Northern
Iowa, she shaped from her sorrow, a new entity; the artist
emerged. Her favorite song: I Will Survive.
There is pain in her earlier work... a sense of beingtorn.
Her images are not kind. They do not soothe or leave you
in peace, or allow you to rest. She is scraping your soul
with her fingernails ... sometimes you want to avert your
eyes. She will not let you.
The new works startle. Naked. Vivid. It is fitting that
Yasmin should be a siren, emerging with dazzling certainty
and candor in these canvasses. The colors are almost painful
to look at. The flesh, buttocks, the interlocking bodies
scream in defiance - not the voice of a settled woman, comfortable
in her skin.
Although initially conceptualized as "Guniguni/ Imaginings"
and meant to express the fantasies that lend passion to
a "long-lasting relationship" (A woman needs to
trust in order to yield, remember?) there may be surrender
here, a certain tenderness in submission, but there is power
too. It is not just the clarity and sharp edge of her technique,
there is also: her rage. |
Dave in turn echoes her erotic obsession. He is also passionate,
sometimes violent. The core of this joint intensity leads
to the Tantric Dance. It is a dance of naked skins. The
simultaneous pleasure bonds the intimates. The simultaneous
imaginings joins the artists. The interaction explores attitudes:
Dave talks about "a visually stimulated response to
the awakingurges of sex", Yasmin of her reactions to
love and love-making.
Yet what fabric are these fantasies spun from, what revelations
are unveiled when the artist takes up the brush ? Dave is
blatantly, brutally sexual. Brave in exploring his imaginings.
Is there still pleasure in inflicting certain humiliations?
One is not here to ask. Only to observe the dance: face
to face, face to back or back to face. It is certainly a
dance that awakens and consumes.
The artist's skill takes one back to the skin. The skill
that was also nurtured at the University of Northern Iowa
where Dave, like Yasmin, was on full scholarship earning
a Master's Degree. Though her work is more painterly, his
more graphic; he partners her with clarity and intelligence.
He is unabashed and exposed, but not vulnerable.
And can anything more be said about sex? Or less.
One discards the clothes and begins to dance, that's all.
For some, it may be the first step to being both intimate
and free. For others, just another experience. The important
thing is to shed what hinders the movement, what limits
the mind. The important thing is: to dance. |
