about 120 x 80 cm total, wild clay, sand, chalk, acrylic on canvas, 2025.
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about 80 x 50 cm total, wild clay, sand, chalk, lime and acrylic on canvas, 2025.
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(series, 2025)
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(series, 2023)
you can give her your whole weight to hold
sink in the middle of a stretching dusk—but
never, ever lose your sun
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and it always starts the same, like this:
give me something, I’ll give you
something in return
and based on the prompt (a texture, a fruit, a number, a time of the day or just a word), you (the player) answer with whatever comes to mind,
whatever you want
in return, you receive an enigmatic poem or a verse or a sentence serving as a mirror. the mirror reflects but never reveals, it suggests never knows, but
it always has something for you
keep that something in return as a lucky charm, a spell, a reminder or read it once
and forget about it
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A GUIDE
Each chapter offers a response to the eponymous question how to create something ?, with the awareness that answers are fluid and permeable in the realm of creativity. Think of an answer as an open-ended reflection to play with, something to try on and take off along the course of the journey.
These reflections are followed by prompts and practices, encouraging the movement of thought into action, and back. These chapters were written for those who claim the title of creatives and for those who don’t, for they too are creators, by sole virtue of their earthly existence.
[Read on Substack]
SUBTITLE POETRY
(series, 2024-ongoing)
Short films on Instagram.
contact@yasunaiman.com
Painting, sculpture, poetry, moving image, however different, they come from the same source, they fill the same container, they serve the same vision, the same craft: the only one worth mastering, and also worth failing at— and that is living. I can confidently say I’m really good at that. I don’t know much about anything else, and that’s the very best part. In all its forms, my work lives in the realm where meaning brushes the edge of feeling, then slips and dissolves.
I think about the sense we make as it overlaps with the sense we feel, translating sensation in both form and word. And when thought escapes language, it is through the physical act of object-making that it continues its course. This never-ending movement places word and form at the core of my practice, each beginning where the other ends.
things I recommend*
*none of it sponsored,
all of it tried and true
life enhancers
Changing my mind
Public transports
Early 2000s internet
Água Viva by Clarice Lispector
Saunas
Soup
Silence
Paris
New Blue Sun by Andre 3000
Jasmine rice cooked in coconut milk with lots of black pepper
Kaytranada’s Boiler Room Montreal DJ Set video
Sculpture gardens
King of Sorrow by Sade
Fig jam
The Fool Tarot Card
Girls by Lena Dunham
Shea Butter
Live music
Aimless walks
People watching
In The Mood for Love by Wong Kar-Wai
The brick chicken at St Bart’s in Berlin
Waking up early
Tiramisu
Kennedy Yanko
Picnics
My mother’s perfume
La femme d’argent by Air
Eye contact
Colored pencils
Master of None by Beach House
Impulsive phone calls
Lana del Rey
Flower arrangements
Sardines
Berlin
The forest
iOs notes app
Nymphia Wind’s Butoh look on Rupaul’s Drag Race season 16
Silver
The beach
Berlin, Germany
Going to the gym
Pears
Silk
Armchairs
Salted butter
Fleabag by Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Boots
The spa
Hot water bottles
Taking the stairs
Taking the elevator
Teardrop by Massive Attack
Nocellara olives
Making out
Sparkling water
Creeks
Muji fineliner ballpoint pens
Spoons
Eusexua by FKA Twigs
Eavesdropping
Dim lights
Paris-Brest
Not knowing what’s going on
Lying on the carpet
Sodade by Cesaria Evora
Poetry
Mayonnaise
Open air cinema
Being in love
Layers
Skin
(in no particular order, evolving)
I didn’t decide to do this, and yet, I did it on purpose.
Twenty-one years later, on a Thursday, I moved
to Berlin.
I had no plans on staying. I had no plans on coming back either.
Nine years later, I’m still here: living, working, writing this.
Before all that, I studied Art History & Archaeology at La Sorbonne in Paris. I loved it so much.
It taught me how to look closely, to read between the lines, and sometimes beyond them.
I graduated with a Bachelor’s in 2016.
Between 2021 and 2025, I’ve shown work in small corners of London, Arundel (also in the UK), and Berlin.
I want to do more of that.
In 2022, I spent a summer in a Finnish village digging for clay, thinking about texture, moss, and time.
It was my first residency and my first time experiencing broad daylight past 11 pm.
I’ve run workshops about pigment, rust, and paper;
talked to audiences about materials, memory, and death;
written poems and essays for magazines.
I was once featured in a documentary about art and the beauty of it, shot between the South of France and my Berlin studio in 2023.
There are people all over the world with paintings I’ve made on their walls.
They live in France, Germany, Italy, the UK, across the US, in Belgium, off the top of my head.
I’ve worked in a few art galleries but actually, let’s not talk about that.
I’d rather talk about atmosphere and temperature and the mystery.
Whatever I do next, you’ll have to come back to find out.
For better or for worse, I’m always doing something.
I’ll let you know what in the next sentence.
Not this one, the one after that;
all photos by Johannes Berger
last updated 14.10.25