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YASMEEN AL AWADI, Stone Breakers Continued, 2007
Courtesy of the artist

Yasmeen Al Awadi has lived much of her early life between the UK and the Middle East she returned to London and graduated from Central Saint Martins with an MA in Fine Art. Her work has been shown at the Blackwater Film Festival, Dublin, 2006; Nicolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center, Denmark, 2006; This Day, Tate Modern, London, 2007; Undo, Dazed Gallery, London 2007 and currently at Recognise, Contemporary Art Platform, London.

Stone Breakers Continued

Commissioned for BOUND the work evolved while investigating unusual social structures and practices that form within rapidly growing urban landscapes. With this growth come huge numbers of foreign workers to fulfill the need for labour. Working and living conditions vary greatly. Wanting to push beyond mere documentation the artist was reminded of how human rights had entered into artistic practices of the past. Gustave Courbet’s highly contraversial realist painting ‘Stonebreakers’ 1849 was a direct and political reaction to an encounter he had with two manual labourers who were toilng by the roadside. To Courbet they were a ‘complete expression of human misery’. ‘Stonebreakers’ became a template for this work visually and as a process. Al Awadi began a series of contemporary renactments with members of this society. The participating models are professional labourers currently working in the middle east.