Eindhoven Caucus
Participants

Yasmine El Rashidi

 yasminerashidi@gmail.com

I grew up in a country with something of an identity crisis unable to reconcile itself between the contemporary and conservative, the East and West. My sense of being was very much the same a foot in both two worlds, a libertarian Arab family with paradoxically conservative views in certain realms.

The dichotomy of a youthful existence with no real sense of place meant a restlessness, and a constant search to find the place, the culture, the environment in which I would belong. In the East there was something not quite right, and in the West what was right was also coupled with a star absence of something. I spent a decade running from city to city, from country to country, in search of my self and away from a history that in time I learned I carried within. It was when I landed in a place absence of all notions of culture, history, heritage Dubai that I came to reconcile, with a history, with a heritage, with a past, and with a self. I have explored the notions of identity, homeland, heritage, culture, belonging, through writing, through film, and most recently, through Islamic art, and my journey of discovery is one that continues and colors my perspective on life, on people, and on creative expression.