Artist-in-Residence – Wafaa Yasin 2006

Wafaa Yasin was born in the Galilee in 1980. She recently completed an MFA in Fine Arts and Social Practice at the California College of the Arts. She conducted a workshop for Al-Ma’mal in 2006.

1. How did you first get involved with Al-Ma'mal?

Al-Ma'mal was the only organisation that was active in Jerusalem and the only independent Palestinian organisation interested in this kind of thing so I was always aware what they doing and often went to their events. I got involved after I graduated from Bezalel in 2005. I met Khadijeh [Kanambo] right after I graduated and she suggested I apply for the workshop programme. I wanted to work with something like this rather than work with an Israeli arts organisation so I submitted a proposal. I talked about performance art and using the body as a medium and proposed teaching them as potential young artists rather than just kids doing a workshop. I was interested in how I could use the workshop to make art a part of daily life in the sense that they could create at anytime beyond our weekly meetings. So they could think of this workshop as the start of their own art career if they decided to become a professional artist one day. For me they were young artists already.

In my interview I talked about why I was interested in Al-Ma’mal, how I wanted to use my knowledge with the kids and also how I could explore my own creativity at the same time. I was really interested in giving the kids a new understanding of contemporary art that allowed for multi-creativity. I wanted an organisation that would support this.

I was always interested in teaching but the problem was that other opportunities were very much controlled by a system. At Bezalel part of the course involved a programme in high schools but there was not really an appreciation of contemporary art and the art of expression. There were classroom and curriculum rules and conventions of teaching that was not as challenging. I registered with the school board and briefly taught an after school programme but I could not teach in the way I needed to.

The fact Al-Ma’mal had mixed groups of kids from Jerusalem was also very interesting for me. Because of the political situation I felt that they could really have a lot to say and to express. I wanted to show them how to use the body in the creation of an art work and also how any materials can be used as art. I always went to lots of different stores and brought all sorts of weird materials together to show them how they could create something out of absolutely anything.

2. Can you tell me something about how you conducted your workshop and how you got so many different and interesting results?
I started from basics – drawing. I brought a mirror in for each kid and got them to start drawing themselves in a simple way. Then I moved on to painting and photography and then I started to bring the materials from the different stores in Jerusalem. I would give then a theme often connected with identity or memory and link that to the streets of the city itself. For example, I told them to take a walk with a camera and search for something related to them or their own interests in the city. It could be anything but they had to come back with a series of images that had a concept they could identify – it could not be random like a tourist. After this experiment with stills narrative we talked about how to create a video piece. One super creative student wanted to just play with a ball through the Old City starting from New Gate [near Al-Ma’mal]. He would move through the crowds playing with the ball while someone documented his journey. It was a performance based completely in the city and this was not an easy thing to do either physically or culturally.

In some classes I talked about other artists and how they used their bodies as tools for art. I showed them Mona Hatoum’s videos [Them and us…. and other divisions (1984] in which she crawled on the street. It was very easy for them to understand her performance and one student was so interested in this performance he wanted to imitate what Mona Hatoum did but in the Old City. He wore a mask because he didn’t want to be distracted by the crowd and he started crawling. He was also covered in fabric so he couldn’t see anything. This meant that the other kids had to lead him and film him so it became a collaborative group exercise.

Sometimes I chose locations for specific reasons. We had filmed in the Christian and Muslim quarters of the Old City but I also took the kids to film in the Jewish quarter. I didn’t want to them to be afraid and I wanted to make them express themselves in areas that they didn’t feel they belonged. This also gave them a different audience. They were super creative there as well. They had an open space near David’s Citadel and their mission was to create a video.

My method was always to bring a few basic materials that they could use as props if they needed them. In this case I had some tape. First they made a frame on the wall from the tape and then picked small flowers and started painting in the frame in the wall. Then one student created a circle and put it in a tree so that the top of the tower was behind it from a certain perspective. All of the ideas came from them but the point for me was to let them understand that in order to make a performance you don’t need more than your body.

Everyone would stand and watch as the kids worked and this made them very happy. I really felt that the city needed these kids and that they needed more freedom and opportunity just to do things like this. The simple act of expressing themselves in their own city created a nice environment. Many people asked them what they were doing and this made them really proud because they were not used to receiving positive attention. Most were so creative and I really felt that I had helped to open this gate for expression even though it was very hard at the beginning.

3. What were the main challenges during your workshop?
The most challenging thing was how to keep the group together while also treating everyone individually and working out when to be involved and when I needed to withdraw. They were very different people and also different ages so addressing this balance between group and individual was sometimes hard. However, I usually gave them the same mission but got them to do it in a different way with different materials. Another challenge was how to keep it interesting and enjoyable while also getting them to understand and embrace the reality that there are tedious parts of being an artist or indeed being anything in life.

4. Do you have any other observations about your workshops or about Al-Ma'mal itself?
All the participants surprised me but I think the freedom I had to explore ideas, methods and materials helped me get the best out of them. Al-Ma'mal gave me a space in which I was completely free to act and I didn’t have to compromise on what the creative possibilities were. I also enjoyed the fact that in the final project I got the kids themselves to come with proposals and Al-Ma’mal was totally open to try and facilitate their ideas. Nothing was ever ruled out until it had at least been tried. The final exhibition very conceptual and made you ask yourself questions. Visually it looked beautiful too with all kinds of material and all kinds of work ideas and installation.

It was a great start for me personally right after graduating. I didn’t only learn how I could build a workshop and build up a group but I also learned a lot in terms of understanding myself and my own forms of expression through the workshops.

Wafaa Yasin Interview – August 5th 2010