womanthismonth.com | DECEMBER 2025 INTERVIEW 16 Art, Inheritance and Change Curator and artist Yasmin Sharabi has spent her life between cultures. As she prepares for a new chapter in the United States, she opens up to Kristian Harrison about turning towards psychotherapy, inherited stories and healing through art. Born in Greece to a Palestinian father and an American mother, Ms. Sharabi has never belonged to a single place. That sense of in-between has shaped a career in which she has guided institutions, collections and audiences, yet it is now pushing her towards a quieter but more personal path. “I have always known my life would involve art,” she says, “but recently I started to realise that the way I was working with art needed to change.” Between histories and homelands Art entered Ms. Sharabi’s life early. After moving to Bahrain as a child she attended St Christopher’s School, where a particularly committed art teacher encouraged her talent and made studio work feel like a serious pursuit rather than an extracurricular diversion. University studies followed in Montreal, where she read studio art and art history, then a Master’s in Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute in London. Behind this formal training sat a more complex education at home. Her mother grew up on a farm in South Dakota, her father is Palestinian and was born in 1938. His memories span British rule, conflict and displacement, and he has long been, as she describes him, “like a history book”. Now in his late 80s, his detailed recollections remain a powerful presence in the family. Those layered histories: Midwestern rural life, Mediterranean childhood, Bahraini adolescence, Palestinian exile; have given Ms. Sharabi a particular sensitivity to questions of belonging, continuity and loss. They also underpin the themes she is increasingly drawn to in her own work. Politics is everywhere, and art is political....but if you want to create change you have to reach people at a human level first.” - Yasmin Sharabi
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