What does “home” mean to you?
Is it a person? Where you have lived for decades? Where you were born?
And what if home was something you could not return to, but carry with you always?
Such is the sentiment of Yasmeen, “Yas” Kanaan’s most recent exhibition, Carrying Home. Through her art, Kanaan recounted a beautiful story of belonging, the passing down of culture, and resistance. She derives stylistic inspiration from renowned Palestinian artists like the late Ismail Shammout and Sliman Mansour.
This interview has been edited for clarity and conciseness.
The Daily spoke to Kanaan about her exhibition’s theme: “For me, art is a form of culture. And culture is a form of preserving identity, and preserving identity is a form of resistance against oppression. So basically, art is my tool and that’s how I chose the theme for this exhibition.”
Kanaan is a Palestinian artist with a bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts from the University of Jordan and a master’s degree in Art History from Concordia University. From a very early age, she learned to conceptualize and express her feelings on a canvas. She admired artists like Palestinian political cartoonist, Naji al Ali, best known for his famous caricature Handalah; Kanaan’s patriotism for Palestine drew the attention of her high school teacher.
“When I was very young, my passion used to come out as anger, and frustration,” she says. “And then I had a teacher, a genuinely good teacher, the type that changes your life, who told me that passion without direction is kind of useless. He taught me how to turn my passion into an educational tool, into something useful for society. And that’s when I unlocked, and started thinking how can art be used as a way to tell a story?”
After graduating from Concordia University, Kanaan worked as an art historian for six years before applying herself to painting again.
“Being an art historian and art curator takes me down a different path, and gives me a different perspective on the arts than being an artist,” she says. [But] “ I still have so much to offer as an artist. So I chose to go back to it. And the first painting that I did is the watermelon piece.”
Long live the Watermelon (2025) is one of the pieces featured in Carrying Home. It shows two watermelons, one cut up in 3 different pieces, ready to be served, and another ripe for the taking, with a beautiful background showcasing embroidery patterns that are anything but random. These patterns are inspired by Kanaan’s mother’s Palestinian embroidery designs, called tatreez, which was the artist’s first love. It was her way of incorporating the importance of passing down heritage and culture, as well as preserving memory – the core themes of her exhibition.
“My heritage and my art were never separated,” she says. “That’s kind of my automatic identity. Every single element in my pieces is part of my everyday life. Even the embroidery pieces, they’re reminiscent of my mother’s jacket that I wear.” Another example Kanaan cites is the frame piece, which she calls “the most important art piece in the exhibit.” “There’s nothing inside it, and it’s over like 60 years old and lived through different exiles from different cities. It was with my family during the Naksa, [also known as the Six Days War of 1967, and] now in Montreal. So, this is part of my identity. It’s carrying home.”
The theme was also heavily inspired by Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani’s novel, Return to Haifa, which dealt with questions centering around the idea and definition of home.
“What is home?” Kanaan asks. “Is it the table that’s been there for so many years that became part of the furniture of the house? Is it the language? What is the concept of a home? What is [its definition]? The answer in the book is ‘the will.’ It had an impact on me because I’m also a traveller. Wherever I go, I have my baggage, my home is my bag…It’s no longer a physical place. It’s a collection of traditions, values, recipes, clothing and embroidery, altogether in a bag.”
To be featured in the 11th edition of Montreal’s Filministes Festival was very significant to Kanaan.
The Filministes Festival is an annual film festival organizing discussions on contemporary feminist issues in Montreal through the screening of cinematographic works, which began in 2015. The festival promotes films and directors from here and abroad, while creating spaces for discussion and reflection for audiences of all kinds. Ultimately, its specificity lies in bridging feminism and cinema.
“This feminist festival is really going for it, and is supportive of otherwise controversial topics,” Kanaan says, “especially in the current context and political climate, where there’s so much anti-immigrant hate. There’s currently a lot of people and policies fueling hate against Arabs [and] Muslims. But the people that I worked with at the festival are very supportive, alhamdulillah.”
“I feel like a lot of feminists like to carry the idea of feminism without actually incorporating the values,” Kanaan continues. “It’s become like a commercial motto for a lot of women because it doesn’t make sense for someone to be a feminist and not take into account causes like the genocide in Sudan, or in Palestine, yet defend someone like Taylor Swift. When it comes to justice, they forget all about feminism. For me, it’s very feminist of me to choose the topic of Palestinian identity as a woman. And even if I wasn’t a woman. I think the cause of Palestine should be directly affiliated with feminism.”
The Festival Filministes opened its doors from March 4 to March 14, with Carrying Home available for viewing from opening night to March 9.
For any and all future exhibitions by Yas Kanaan, you can follow her Instagram page for updates.