project: Beauties of The Town 2022

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Beauties of The Town, Artist Inass Yassin, Art Exhibition Opening at The Museum, Old town, Asira Ashamalyieh, Nablus, Palestine. 

Saturday 27th August 2022 at 4:00 pm 

27th August- 4th September 2022

Exhibition Sections:

• Openning Performance: Al-Loje. Ground Floor.
• Water Color Greetings. Ground Floor.
• Decorated Theater:  Al-Loje:  Ground Floor.
• Oil Portraits. 1st Floor.
• Multimedia Installation: Homage to Studio Cairo:  in 2.5x 3.20 m, Framed Photos, Archival Video, Screen and Shelves.1st Floor

Beauties of The Town

2022   Beauties of The Town, The Museum, The old center of Asira Ash-Shamalieh, Palestine

"Beauties of the Town." In this project, the artist uses photo albums as a way to negotiate the representation and exhibition of women's portraits. Portrait painting is employed to challenge and unravel the censorship imposed on these women’s faces, allowing them to be exhibited as art. This project highlights themes of visibility, identity, and empowerment. The final exhibition included oil-painted portraits, watercolor greeting paintings, a multimedia homage installation, and a site-specific decorated theater design, all produced by the artist.

The entire process—from painting and negotiation to constructing the theater. The exhibition ultimately brings people together, much like the traditional wedding theaters once did, but it was their first time celebrating an oil portraiture exhibition in the town for both men and women. 

"Childhood memories, ingrained in my mind and the minds of multiple generations until the mid-nineties, came flooding back. The vibrant imagery of the colorful stage, a dream I had cherished, materialized when I recreated it in the heart of the old town. I wasn't the only one overwhelmed with joy to see the stage reappear before me after decades; hundreds of townsfolk, spanning generations that had experienced this stage in their youth, shared in the delight. As the colorful stage graced the heart of the old town during the Beauties of The Town exhibition, everyone reveled in its presence, dancing with joy for several days before it vanished once more. 

From this entire experience, I found myself infused with even more colors. Out of it emerged a collection of small watercolor drawings, capturing the essence of joy and vibrancy that characterized the stage, significantly influencing my subsequent works"

The exhibition "Beauties of The Town" is a site-specific project set in the old center of Asira Ashamaliya, a village near Nablus, Palestine. The exhibition introduces a new approach to Palestinian painting, intertwining portraiture, performance, and multimedia installation. At its heart lies a profound exploration of social history and visual culture in rural Palestine during the 1980s. The artist, Inass Yassin, delves into the cultural and historical significance of photographs borrowed from family albums in Asira Al-Shamaliya, many of which were originally developed at Studio Cairo in Nablus. 

Through oil and watercolor paintings, performance, and the reimagining of "Al-Loje"—a traditional rural wedding stage—this exhibition revives forgotten traditions and visual narratives that shaped communal memory.

Reflecting on the project, the artist states: "Using my skill in portrait painting, I embarked on a journey of negotiation with the reserved attitudes toward exhibiting photos of women, an attitude which didn’t exist during the 1980s. The process of negotiation, collecting photos, painting between 2017-2020, organizing the exhibition in 2022 as an intervention, and building the theater was guided by a deep sense of belonging, confrontation, and joy." 

This sentiment underscores the exhibition’s dual role as an artistic endeavor and a social dialogue. It challenges contemporary perceptions of female representation while celebrating the women who filled the artist’s childhood with warmth and vibrancy. Inass recalls the past, when as children, they would compete to climb the colorful wedding theater before the celebrations began, sharing whispered tales of platonic lovers.

By reconstructing and presenting these visual and performative elements, "Beauties of The Town" becomes an art intervention that brings homage to a past era, linking personal memory with shared cultural heritage and contemporary art language.

The exhibition Bride and Groom: Beauties of The Town, presents a diversified treatment of photographs borrowed from family albums and photos in Asira Al-Shamaliya town, most of which were developed and printed in the eighties of last century at Studio Cairo  in Nablus. The albums contained scenes of the Loje: the personalized colorful stage that was designed and built in the house or garden of each family celebrating a wedding.

This exhibition Bride and Groom is part of an ongoing project of research, archiving and visual production since 2019. The project is in partnership with the municipality of Asira Al-Shamaliya and supported by the  @afac.fund  Arab Fund for Arts and Culture - AFAC، and A.M. Qattan Foundation, the Amideast Alumni Program and with contribution by Osama and Hadeel Yassin. 

 "Using my skill in portrait painting, I embarked on a journey of negotiation with the reserved attitudes toward exhibiting photos of women, an attitude which didn’t exist during the 1980s. The process of negotiation, collecting photos, painting between 2017-2020, organizing the exhibition in 2022 as an intervention, and building the theater was guided by a deep sense of belonging, confrontation, and joy." 

 I wasn't the only one overwhelmed with joy to see the stage reappear before me after decades; hundreds of townsfolk, spanning generations that had experienced this stage in their youth, shared in the delight. As the colorful stage graced the heart of the old town during the Beauties of The Town exhibition, everyone reveled in its presence, dancing with joy for several days before it vanished once more. 

The exhibition "Beauties of The Town" presents a rich exploration of photographs borrowed from family albums in Asira Al-Shamaliya, most of which were developed and printed in the 1980s at Studio Cairo (1956-2019) in Nablus. The installation was created using archival footage and found frames following the passing of Abo Jamil in 2019.

Studio Cairo was founded in 1956 by Mohamad Abo Hasireh, also known as Abo Jamil. He managed the studio for decades alongside his lifelong friend, who also went by the nickname Abo Jamil. Together, they worked as photographers, making Studio Cairo a vibrant stop amid the hustle and bustle of Nablus, the largest shopping hub in Palestine.

Until the late 1980s, clients from diverse backgrounds visited the studio attic, dressing in costumes and makeup to pose for solo and group photo sessions with family and loved ones. Abo Jamil developed and printed thousands of photographs, displaying his work in shop windows and vitrines for decades. However, after the late 1980s, the number of clients declined, leading Abo Jamil to gradually remove his work from public view. In 2006, he made the heartbreaking decision to burn his own archive.