In compartmentalized altar-like installations, decorative objects, and stand-alone figurines, Maryam Yousif’s artworks present like artifacts of a forgotten culture reimagined with a modern sensibility. She draws with clay in a natural fusion, and looks to ancient representation to inform the present.
Yousif spent the first 10 years of her life in Baghdad. Her family left Iraq in 1995 after a series of wars in the region, followed by imposed sanctions and constraining government policies, urged them to leave the turbulence behind for a life in Canada. Youssif attended the University of Windsor, completing a dual degree in Visual Arts and Communications in 2008 and had two solo shows at the culmination of her undergraduate studies.
“I was a kid really, and we were all running wild and free, but I don’t take those experiences lightly. They gave me so much confidence and I felt so immensely supported by my peers. Canada was so good to me,” she said.
Following that, her parents lived and worked for a few years in Monterey, California. In 2008, after graduating from college, Yousif went there to live with them.
“I made friends who were all moving to Berkeley so I tagged along,” she said.
Yousif began working odd jobs, attended graduate school at the San Francisco Art Institute (MFA, 2017) where she met her husband and started a family. She currently lives in the Dogpatch neighborhood of San Francisco. With many friends in the Bay Area who are artists, Yousif says her community continues to champion and support each other.
Yousif’s first experience of visual culture was through the artwork of her mother, a painter and floral sculptor whose work was all over their house in Iraq. In her youth, she was also very taken by pop music, in both its Arabian and Western forms, as an expressive influence. Other key elements have shaped her creative life, among them seeing Mesopotamian artifacts for the first time at the British Museum in 2018 and taking her first ceramic hand-building class at SFAI when she was 30 years old, when she experienced “a certain feeling” around using clay as a primary medium. Becoming a teacher of ceramics was also a formative moment.
“I’ve been teaching at various levels since 2017. First in youth programs at SFAI, then an AICAD teaching fellowship provided the opportunity to teach at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I landed at CCA in 2023, though this semester is sadly my last one there,” she said.
Yousif describes her subject matter as a mix of research—in particular, on historical female figures from Mesopotamia and objects associated with them—and narratives that reflect personal experiences and memories.
“It’s all done through clay, which brings its own magic and feel to the process. When it comes down to it, I’m just trying to figure out how to say something while making something. How can I make a thing that can tell a story? How do I build on the knowledge I’ve accumulated and become a better craftsperson? Clay lends itself to endless exploration in every way. I can explore technique or I can hash out a theme or story,” Yousif told 48hills.
