Yara Asmar (LB)
Period of residency: September-October 2024
Yara Asmar is a Lebanese musician, video artist, and puppeteer who lives and works in Beirut. In her practice, she recomposes and diverts childish symbols to create universes that are both dark and poetic – the antithesis of the naïve positivism that encompasses the world of early childhood. Since 2019, she has been creating puppets, which often take the form of human faces, to incorporate into short films that explore the distressing and imprisoning impact of time, anxiety, and death.
Asmar has recently begun to perform live, generating highly sensitive experimental compositions through the use of toys, such as a deconstructed children’s piano, a vintage accordion or a metallophone.
During her residency, Asmar will be working on her project The Funerary Tapes, a musical study of the representation of death and the myths that surround it. Inspired by the Musikalisches Würfelspiel system, by which music is generated from rolls of the dice, The Funerary Tapes will take the form of a collection of tape loops recorded on accordion, metallophone, and organ, which can be played simultaneously or individually to create a variety of sound compositions.