OCHI is pleased to participate in The Armory Show to take place at the Javits Center in New York, NY from September 8 through 10, 2023, with a VIP Preview to take place on Thursday, September 7th. The gallery will feature a solo presentation of works by Yasmine Nasser Diaz in the Presents section, booth P25.

Born in Chicago to parents who immigrated from southern Yemen, Yasmine Nasser Diaz is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice navigates overlapping tensions around religion, gender, and third-culture identity, “often drawing upon the frictions experienced between the individual and the collective. Using collage, textiles, immersive installation, video, performance, and sound, Diaz mines her personal archives and collects found imagery, objects, and footage that reflect her Yemeni- American upbringing and create space for collective diasporic discourse and collaborations.

OCHI’s Armory presentation focuses on the expanded universe of For Your Eyes Only (2021- ongoing), a multi-media installation that repositions a young woman’s bedroom as a site for individual expression and protest. The central component of For Your Eyes Only (FYEO) are selfie videos found through social media that feature women and non-binary South West Asian & North African (SWANA) individuals dancing, interspersed with footage of political speeches and women- led protests dating back to the 1950s. Malleable to each exhibition context, this iteration of FYEO includes furniture, a rug, and a beaded curtain that suggest a domestic, private space. FYEO offers a nuanced glance at a contemporary landscape of human connection that highlights feminist and queer strategies of resistance.

Inspired by her FYEO collaborators and contributors, Diaz has conceived a new series of velvet burnouts that feature larger-than-life, solitary figures expressing protest, emotion, and solidarity through physical movement. Video stills of dancers are “burned” into velvet grounds using a fabric etching paste, which dissolves the velvet’s cellulose fibers and reveals figures of silk mesh. Also known as devoré, velvet burnouts were in vogue during the 1990s, an era that Diaz frequently references, citing its frequent use in a Yemeni style of dress known as a dir’. Diaz embellishes each burnout with hand-sewn appliqué (fabric collage), machine stitching, or embroidery, backing some works with additional patterned fabrics and allowing others to cast shadows on the wall behind a work. Diaz aligns the malleability and durability of the velvet with the collective FYEO spirit, as she protects individual identities and references the roles of visibility and censorship in the lives of women and queer folx from diasporic SWANA communities.

Yasmine Nasser Diaz (b. Chicago, IL) has exhibited work internationally at venues including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, OXY ARTS / Occidental College, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Charlie James Gallery, Residency Art Gallery, and OCHI in Los Angeles, CA; Arab American National Museum and Habibi House in Michigan; NADA at Governor’s Island in New York, NY; ZoHo in Rotterdam, Netherlands; and Station in Beirut, Lebanon. Diaz’s work has been featured in publications including Los Angeles Times, artnet news, Artillery Magazine, Hyperallergic, Architectural Digest, Detroit Metro Times, and Artsy. Her work is included in various private and public collections including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, University of California Los Angeles, and the Arab American National Museum. Diaz lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and is represented by OCHI.