There is no room for emotions here. 19 June - 1st July 2021 POSK Gallery, London.

The quest to answer questions made capturing life and time through images an obsession. Memory would no longer be left to the mind alone. Yusuf’s present work is a collection of collages which started to answer his original questions. These are images of anti-war protests, festival crowds, the reflection of the sea, the glass on a window, the rim of a coffee cup, the edge of a pavement, the exposed limb of a homeless person in winter – all juxtaposed and painted over like our everyday realities, which we sometimes accept as truths, often deny, but mostly ignore. However, these images remain part of a whole, the narrative of our collective consciousness driven by fear, hope, despair, and love. Here our history is solidified and says we all belong, whether we like it or not.

LOCKDOWNS - Against the Odds. 17 May - June 2021

artists: Joanna Ciechanowska, Yusuf Elsaadi, Gosia Łapsa-Malawska.

Nobody could really imagine it, let alone predict it. Everybody thought it would just pass. And then, it all went wrong. Even now, it’s hard to see the light. Some say, ’you are lucky, at least you have something to do, you can paint’. Except that it is not really about ’having something to do’. I walk, paint, sleep, paint, eat, paint, wash, paint, talk, paint, watch, paint, think, paint… Can’t help it. It had always been like that, so what’s so different now?. Ciechanowska Joanna 2021.