Yasmina Hilal was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1996. She is a Lebanese-American collage artist and photographer, whose work is influenced by and concerned with fashion. This is no surprise,...
Written by
LIAM SIBAI
Yasmina Hilal was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1996. She is a Lebanese-American collage artist and photographer, whose work is influenced by and concerned with fashion. This is no surprise, considering that her grandmother owned a clothing store in Beirut called Beverly Hills, in the 1960s 1. In addition, her mother, Natalie Mokadem, was a renowned photographer and collage artist in the 1990s 2.
Hilal’s mother gifted Yasmina her first camera, a Canon ae1, at the ripe age of 15. Two years later, Hilal took another step in her mother’s direction when she started experimenting with collage 3. During this teenage period, in the early to mid-2010s, Hilal was also often featured on her friend Sarah Inkidar’s YouTube channel 4, where the two performed renditions of the popular songs of the period 5. This was another endeavor into the world of culture and the audio-visual, before the artists’ formal artistic training.
Hilal graduated from the International College (IC) in Beirut and attended Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2015, where she majored in Visual Media Arts, and minored in Photography. Hilal also served as a darkroom monitor during her time at Emerson, feeding her preoccupation with film photography, in particular. Her knack for photography and film led her to work as a cinematographer on the sets of films like Errands, 2017, and School Don't Cost a Thing, 2018 6, while pursuing her degree. She also produced several elaborate, visually engaging, and yet overlooked, short films in this period 7.
Hilal’s experience with filmmaking would not stop there. While at university, she also took an animation class, where she had to collage different images and animated figures onto roles of 16mm film. This general manner of mixing analog photography and montage that she learned at university still largely embodies the spirit of her practice today 8.
She made use of this technique for Civil Love 9, an exhibition that took place during the opening of Beit Beirut as part of Beirut Design Week’s collaboration with Absolute Vodka. For the exhibition, Hilal produced an artwork featuring a faceless couple and photographs of war victims 10 .
Hilal made brief returns to Lebanon for projects like Civil Love and the never institutionally exhibited but hypnotic Houriyat AlBahr11, which featured renowned actress Yumna Marwan 12. Marwan was one of the many women who modeled for this project which centered women in hijabs, burkas, and other traditional Middle Eastern women’s attire, showing the influence of Iranian photographer Shirin Neshat 13, who also photographed women in such garments 14.
After returning to Beirut permanently in 2019, this manner of photography and modeling became part of her artistic blueprint. She made use of this established framework in 2022, with her first solo exhibition. Trial and Error opened at Zalfa Halabi Gallery in Beirut. The exhibition was made up of different elaborate photo collages. The pieces embodied the spirit of fashion photoshoots, as they featured models in clothes often styled and put together by Hilal herself 15. A piece like The Executioner's Daughter, 2022, features a model posing, with her hands on her knees 16, in a manner that would be expected of a fashion photoshoot. Hilal even used the same model from The Executioner's Daughter, 2022, standing in a similar position, at the same location, in the same clothing for one of her fashion photoshoots 17. The artwork, unlike the fashion photo, however, featured tangible layered prints of different variations of the image.
Trial and Error, in contrast with her previous projects, established Hilal as an artist of the tactile, rather than the digital, which is something she is quite famous for 18. Trial and Error not only featured film photographs but also pieces of plastic and other materials 19, ornamenting, and punctuating various aspects of the different pieces.
Trial and Error embodied another staple of what would become Hilal’s style: puzzle-making 20. Hilal’s process often includes cutting different copies of the same picture into smaller pieces and then rearranging them. Sometimes she rearranges the original photo exactly as it was to different extents, and on other occasions completely distorts the original photograph to varying degrees. Sometimes the artist also includes the same image several times in the same piece 21 . This puzzled aspect of her work is not something the audience must engage in, as finding clues that Hilal had left for them to figure out an intentionally hidden truth. Rather, the notion of puzzle-making or puzzle-solving describes Hilal’s process of finding the best way to arrange the cut-outs she has made; it is a technique based on trial and error.
One can see this same technique in her second exhibition, 2023’s I See Me in You. In terms of process and subject matter I See Me in You is not so different from Trial and Error. The 2023 show heavily featured collages, puzzles, fashion, and tactile materiality. With I See Me in You, however, materiality is brought to the forefront to a greater extent than it had before.
Many of the portraits of the women featured in this show, including a portrait of Hilal herself 22, were printed onto resin molds that were made from photo frames Hilal’s grandmother had collected 23. Ripples in a Pond, 2022, is a piece that is part of the Ramzi and Saeda Dalloul Art Foundation's collection, that centers on both fashion and materiality. The photo portrait features a woman in a dress and is printed onto acetate, in a manner that emphasizes the shiny surface on which the image is printed.
The core concept around which the pieces were constructed, was the dressing of young women, including Hilal, in the clothes of their mothers. The phrase I See Me in You refers to a mother or grandmother seeing herself in one of her descendants.
This theme of motherhood and daughterhood is a constant subject matter in Hilal’s oeuvre and life. In one of Hilal’s later short films, Alwan Al-Shams, 2020, the artist and curator 24, Rhea Saad 25, is featured wearing her grandmother’s clothes. Trial and Error, a show that has nothing to do with motherhood or daughterhood, still featured a piece called The Executioner's Daughter, 2022. Hilal even admires movies about this topic, such as Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter26. The ubiquity and saliency of this theme likely sprouts from the artist’s personal life, taking into consideration the extent to which her mother’s and grandmother’s careers and practices affected her own.
Beyond her personal and cultural influences, Hilal's artistic vision is also significantly shaped by her contemporaries and historical art figures. She considers herself part of a new generation of young Lebanese women film photographers 27 which includes Myriam Boulos, Amal Ghamlouch, Nisrine Bakaev, and Tanya Traboulsi. Hilal sees herself as part of this community and even has personal relationships with some of them, though she acknowledges that each of them possesses a unique voice. Another inspiration for Hilal is Gustave Courbet’s Woman with a Parrot. It inspired the project she is currently working on, which consists of portraits of different animals.
Yasmina Hilal's body of work, profoundly shaped by her Lebanese-American heritage and familial influences in fashion and photography, culminates in a unique blend of tactile collage art and film photography. Her work, characterized by themes of motherhood, daughterhood, and cultural identity, not only reflects her personal experiences but also positions her as a significant figure among a new generation of Lebanese women artists. Hilal's evolving style, marked by her innovative use of materials and techniques, continues to contribute meaningfully to contemporary art.
Edited byWAFA ROZ & ELSIE LABBAN
Notes:
1 ياسمينا هلال... رحلة في الذاكرة والأمومة - Yasmina Hilal...A Voyage into Memory and Motherhood, YouTube (Daraj Media, 2023),
2 Liam Sibai, Interview with Yasmina Hilal, other, Dalloul Art Foundation, October 24, 2023.
3 Liam Sibai, Interview with Yasmina Hilal, other, Dalloul Art Foundation, October 24, 2023.
4 Pumped Up Kicks/Stolen Dance/Riptide Mashup (Sarah Inkidar Ft. Yasmina Hilal), YouTube (Sarah Inkidar, 2014),
7 “Video,” Yasmina Hilal, accessed October 27, 2023, https://www.yasminahilal.com/video.
8 Liam Sibai, Interview with Yasmina Hilal, other, Dalloul Art Foundation, October 24, 2023.
9 “Absolut Civil Love Exhibition at Beirut Design Week,” Fawaz holding sal., June 22, 2018, fawazholding.com
10 “Exhibitions,” YASMINA HILAL, accessed October 27, 2023, www.yasminahilal.com
11 Lise Lanot, “Rencontre : Entre Photo et Collage, Yasmina Hilal Expérimente à l’infini,” Konbini, January 28, 2019, https://www.konbini.com/arts/rencontre-entre-photo-collage-yasmina-hilal-experimente-a-linfini-arts-visuels.
12 “Yumna Marwan - Actor Filmography، Photos، Video,” elCinema.com, accessed October 27, 2023, https://elcinema.com/en/person
13 Dalia Al-Dujaili, “Beirut-Born Yasmina Hilal Organically Creates Mixed Media Collages – Cutting, Gluing and Sewing Away from Digital Manipulation,” It’s Nice That, September 21, 2021, www.itsnicethat.com
14 “Shirin Neshat’s Rebellious Silence Essay,” Art Identity and Culture RSS, accessed October 27, 2023, https://reinterpellations.web
15 Liam Sibai, Interview with Yasmina Hilal, other, Dalloul Art Foundation, October 24, 2023.
26 Yasmina Hilal on Her Creative Journey, Inspirations and Collaborations | Quickfire Questions, YouTube (Beirut Today, 2022),
27 Liam Sibai, Interview with Yasmina Hilal, other, Dalloul Art Foundation, October 24, 2023.
Sources:
“9 Crimes”-Damien Rice (Sarah Inkidar Ft. Yasmina Hilal Cover). YouTube. Sarah Inkidar, 2014.
“Absolut Civil Love Exhibition at Beirut Design Week.” Fawaz holding sal., June 22, 2018. http://fawazholding.com/newsDetails/events/absolut-civil-love-exhibition-at-beirut-design-week.
Al-Dujaili, Dalia. “Beirut-Born Yasmina Hilal Organically Creates Mixed Media Collages –Cutting, Gluing and Sewing Away from Digital Manipulation.” It’s Nice That, September 21, 2021. https://www.itsnicethat.com
“Fashion.” Yasmina Hilal. Accessed October 27, 2023. https://www.yasminahilal.com/mixed-media/lou Lanot, Lise. “Rencontre : Entre Photo et Collage, Yasmina Hilal Expérimente à l’infini.” Konbini, January 28, 2019. https://www.konbini.com/arts/rencontre-entre-photo-collage-yasmina-hilal-experimente-a-linfini-arts-visuels/Mallat, Danny. “Couper, Coller, Construire : Le Si Beau Photomontage de Yasmina Hilal.”
L’Orient-Le Jour, August 9, 2023. https://www.lorientlejour.com/article/1345908/couper-coller-construire-le-si-beau-photomontage-de-yasmina-hilal.html
Mekkaoui, Meeran. “The Captivating Artistry of Yasmina Hilal’s ‘I See Me in You’ Exhibition.” GQ Middle East, 2023. https://www.gqmiddleeast.com/culture/yasmina-hilal-exhibition-in-lebanon
“Mixed Media.” Yasmina Hilal. Accessed October 27, 2023. yasminahilal.com
Pumped Up Kicks/Stolen Dance/Riptide Mashup (Sarah Inkidar ft. Yasmina Hilal). YouTube.
Sarah Inkidar, 2014.
“Rhea Saad - Parsons Paris – The New School - France | Linkedin.” LinkedIn. Accessed October 27, 2023. fr.linkedin.com/in
“Shirin Neshat’s Rebellious Silence Essay.” Art Identity and Culture RSS. Accessed October 27, 2023. https://reinterpellations.web.unc.edu/about/neshats-rebellious-silence/neshats-rebellious-silence-essay/.
Sibai, Liam. Interview with Yasmina Hilal. Other. Dalloul Art Foundation, October 24, 2023.
“Two’s a Crowd.” Yasmina Hilal. Accessed October 28, 2023.
“Video.” Yasmina Hilal. Accessed October 27, 2023. https://www.yasminahilal.com/video.
“Yasmina Hilal - Biography.” IMDb. Accessed October 27, 2023. m.imdb.com/name/
Yasmina Hilal on her creative journey, inspirations and collaborations | Quickfire Questions. YouTube. Beirut Today, 2022.
“Yumna Marwan - Actor Filmography، Photos، Video.” elCinema.com. Accessed October 27, 2023. elcinema.com/en/person
ياسمينا هلال... رحلة في الذاكرة والأمومة - Yasmina Hilal...A voyage into memory and motherhood. YouTube. Daraj Media, 2023.
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