Die in Your Arms, 2026, Oil on panel, 10 × 8 in
NADIA YOUNES
Artist Statement
Borders have always played a significant role in my life, both as physical dividers and as markers of shifting identity. I was born in Nazareth to a Palestinian refugee father and a Soviet immigrant mother. Crossing between Israel, Mali, Mauritania, Jordan, and Russia shaped my sensitivity to cultural codes, which I read through architecture and infrastructure. I am drawn to anonymous, provisional spaces such as corridors, tunnels, and construction sites, places that evoke the feeling of never fully arriving or leaving, but rather passing through.
In painting, I often begin with a photoreal description of these overlooked systems. As I work, material decisions take over. The surface pushes back, and illusion meets the limits of the substrate. My sculptural work uses cast resin, paint skins, and construction scraps. I treat these materials as bodies in a state of flux. Through them, I examine how histories of labor, gender, and class are embedded in our environment.
My relationship with salvaged materials is personal before it is aesthetic. My family collected and resold scrap metal, and I continue this practice, sourcing hardware and debris from demolition sites.
I work best in unfamiliar environments that disrupt routine, allowing the properties of discarded materials to guide the process. I am interested in moments when structures fail, systems break down, and surfaces reveal their contents. I am especially attentive to how sustained observation alters spaces and behavior, and how internal systems of order are constructed or undone. Through these conditions, identity, both personal and collective, is shaped by fragments of place, memory, and experience.