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Artwork Spotlight: Maryam Yousif

For Maryam Yousif, dance is a living connection to her ancestral past. 

Assistant Curator Naz Cuguoğlu introduces Yousif’s sculptures for Rave into the Future.

Maryam Yousif’s colorful ceramic sculptures pay homage to the formidable females of West Asian lore, from the goddess Innana to the queen Semiramis. For the exhibition Rave into the Future, Yousif exalts a modern-day icon — the Assyrian pop star Juliana Jendo — in the form of a larger-than-life audio cassette sculpted in porcelain.

Maryam Yousif was born in Baghdad, Iraq in 1985 and lives in San Francisco. Rooted in clay, Yousif’s practice is an ongoing exploration of Mesopotamian mythologies, histories, and artifacts, merging these ancient objects with more contemporary references and forms.

Images: Installation views of Rave into the Future: Art in Motion, October 24, 2025–January 26, 2026. Photograph by Kevin Candland, © Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. 

Photo of Maryam Yousif © Chris Grunder.

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Rehearsing the Otherwise
Sarah Rifky is co-founder of Beirut, an art initiative in Cairo, and founder of CIRCA (Cairo International Resource Center for Art).