Mixed Media (film/sculpture/textiles)

Yaminah Abdur-Rahim is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher from Oakland, CA. She works primarily in video, performance and sculpture.

She began in grassroots artist spaces, exhibiting in Bay Area galleries such as Galeria de la Raza (San Francisco) and Omiiroo Gallery (Oakland). She holds an MFA in Visual Arts and Culture from Mills College, Oakland.

She has received awards and fellowships from the San Francisco Public Library, Still Here San Francisco, Radar Productions and the Kearny Street Workshop. You can find her work at www.yaminahlabelle.space

Mixed Media (light/sculpture/reclaimed materials/laser cutter)

Art’s purpose is to disrupt our habits and make us reexamine our relationships to them. When I make art using trash, it reminds me that trash is an invented concept. Like money, society, and religion, trash is made up but also real. If trash is brought into being by labeling it, is trash as easily eliminated with a simple relabeling? Trash and progress are ideas that are bound together, for without progress there is no trash. WIthout the dream of tomorrow, there are no discarded yesterdays. Technology is the manifestation of our progress, but is also one of the largest sources of trash. The inevitable cost of invention is the devaluing of previous inventions, and we can observe items go from 'essential’ to “useful in the past” to “useless now” with astonishing quickness.

The source and history of trash is also important. Some of the trash I use comes from objects I find on the street, while others are treasures found at estate sales. Some comes from industrial facilities and factories, some from art studios, and some from my own personal waste stream. Trash is everywhere, just waiting to be claimed.

In this residency, I intend to continue to explore the relationship between trash, technology, and ourselves. Much of the work on display tonight already features trash sourced from the Port Labs, and I am excited to see what other items of beauty I can create from these leftovers.

Textiles, Jewlery/Adornment

I find deep pleasure in bright and saturated colors, patterns and textures. Through my eyes fiber becomes a sculpture for manipulation, play and movement. I devote a lot of my artistic time to dance companies throughout the Bay Area ensuring that I’ve captured the vision of the artist I’m collaborating with as well as the individuals who end up wearing my art. The work needs to be comfortable and moveable. The rest is just the magic that is my art merging with theirs!

Between the costumes I’ve designed, built or collaborated on larger scale installations; 6 ft bows made from recycled sail material for the Port Bar in Oakland, a Tree Canopy for a popup Nocturne X at Gray Area in San Francisco, 4 ft stuffed animals made out of recycled sails and a few iterations of a 10x20 Rigged Wall Curtain R&D for Bandaloop that was made out of found fibers that would have otherwise been discarded.

Machined Sculpture, Mixed Media

Present is a small handful of works that traveled across the country with me when I moved, representing less than 1% of my work, but shows my love of whimsey, nature, material, and using conventional processes to achieve unconventional results.

I am an interdisciplinary, multimedia artist with a strong technical drive to make works that invite the viewer to redefine their understanding of what art is.

I seek to blur the line between fiction and reality, infusing the world with “evidence” of enchanting possibilities, all while paying homage to the ultimate designer: nature.

I’m interested in how the expanding market of hobby 3d printers can push art deeper into average hands and homes, democratizing and personalizing access of not only the image, but now the object.