Feathers emerge from an antique box, suspended in an empty space. Symbols of life and movement, they remain still, caught between presence and absence. A key curls from the box by a ribbon, evoking the promise of something beyond, yet that promise remains unrealised. The box’s origins remain unknown, its hidden contents and histories beyond reach. The painting considers what remains when life becomes still, reflecting on impermanence, memory and the traces of lives that linger within material forms.

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Yasmine’s paintings explore the fragile relationship between life, death, memory and material presence. A Fine Art graduate of Central Saint Martins, she draws on Dutch vanitas paintings, memento mori symbolism and surrealism, combining hyperrealist techniques with chiaroscuro to create dreamlike, suspended spaces. Working with gathered, inherited and found objects, alongside natural forms, she examines impermanence, memory and the traces of life held within material things. Through symbolic compositions, her work explores the shifting boundaries between presence and absence, vitality and stillness, and how objects preserve fragments of experience, emotion and memory.

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