ABOUT

Deborah Yasinsky is a NYC-based artist, curator, and educator whose interdisciplinary practice explores memory, childhood, and ritual. Through experience and imagination, she creates surreal, escapist environments across painting, printmaking, ceramics, drawing, and film, approaching both joyful and traumatic memories through symbolic intermediaries that illuminate despair and hope. Her imagery draws from flora and fauna remembered from her childhood along the Hudson River, the Palisades, and Inwood Hill Park, where figures emerge amid repeating motifs of birds, butterflies, unicorns, forest imagery, flattened perspective forms, and jeweled objects. These elements are juxtaposed with abstractions of memory that celebrate moments of wonder while memorializing painful episodes.

Recollections of visits to the Cloisters inform references to medieval ornamentation and the symbolism of ritual objects drawn from both Jewish and Catholic traditions. Yasinsky’s ceramic works function as narrative vessels, carved in low relief and finished with painterly underglazes and glazes. Her paintings are encrusted with beads, rhinestones, jewelry, glitter, and layered patterning, evoking the experience of exploring her mother’s jewelry box as a child and reflecting on the complex and timeless experiences women share through youth, caregiving, and relationships.

Yasinsky has exhibited her work nationally, including at Coral Gables Museum, Galerie Lucida, Empty Set Gallery, Local Project Art Space, and Dominican University, and has worked with institutions such as Hudson River Museum, 92Y, Stepping Stones Museum for Children, and ArtsWestchester. She is a recipient of the City Artist Corps Grant and was an Artist in Residence on Governors Island with Bronx Art Space. Recent curatorial projects include Ancestral Foods: Family Feasts at Bronx Art Space. She holds an MFA in Painting from Lehman College, CUNY, an MS.Ed in Museum Education from Bank Street College of Education, a BA in Fine Arts and Illustration from Stern College, Yeshiva University, and an AAS in Textile Surface Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology. Yasinsky is currently Assistant Director and Curator of Education at Lehman College Art Gallery and an Adjunct Lecturer in drawing and art education at Lehman College, CUNY.

Contact
deborahyasinsky@gmail.com

Instagram
@deborahyasinsky

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Memories of Ritual, Adas Israel, Sag Harbor, NY, 2024
Tapestries of Memory, Empty Set Gallery, Bronx, NY, 2021

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
LOOK UP, Times Square, Introxpert and Times Square Alliance, 2025
Echoes of Eden, Galerie Lucida, Red Bank, NJ, 2025
Art Fair 14C, Galerie Lucida, Jersey City, NJ, 2025
Spring Fever, Galerie Lucida, Red Bank, NJ, 2025
Botanica, Galerie Lucida, Red Bank, NJ, 2024
Momento, Galerie Lucida, Red Bank, NJ, 2023
BAS Summer House, Governor’s Island, NYC, 2023
NYC X Design, Sculpture Space, LIC, NY, 2023
Homecoming: Lehman College Graduate Art Programs Alumni, Bronx, NY, 2023
Skelly and Friends, Brooklyn, NY, 2023
Summered in the Catskills, Birdhouse Brooklyn, NY, 2022
P&D and Mini Me, Birdhouse Gallery, Hancock, NY, 2022
Apparitions, Paradice Palase, Brooklyn, NY, 2021
Tapestries of Memory, Empty Set Gallery, NYC, 2021
Text To Frame, Motherling Gallery, Texas, 2021
Transcendence, Local Project Art Space, LIC, NYC, 2021
Rototscope Project, Hot Cabinet, NYC, 2021
Alien Nations 2020, Coral Gables Museum, CB, Fl, 2020
Primordial Soup, Paradice Palase, Brooklyn, NY, 2020
Made In Practice, Paradice Palase, Brooklyn, NY, 2020
Rototscope Project, Hot Cabinet, NYC, 2020
Woodcut Prints, Big Ink Prints, Newmarket, NH, 2020
Thesis Exhibition LCAG, Bronx, NY, 2020
Cosmic Freedom, Hot Cabinet Film Screening, Bronx Music Heritage Cnt, NY, 2019
Paintings and Ceramics, Office of the President, Lehman College, CUNY, NY, 2019
Assemblage Portraiture, YU Museum Education Department, NYC, 2019
Object Trouve, Riverfront Art Gallery, Yonkers, NY, 2019
Online Exhibition, Trestle Gallery, 2018
Interfaith Biennial, Dominican U, River Forest, IL, 2018
The Freak Show, Local Project Art Space, LIC, NYC, 2018
Community, 14th Street Y Gallery, New York, NY, 2018
CUNY Film Festival, New York, NY, 2018
NYC MFA Exhibition, Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition, Brooklyn, NY, 2018
Salon Exhibition, Greenpoint Gallery, Brooklyn, NY , 2017
YAW, Yonkers, NY, 2017
Yonkers Carpet Mill Artist Collective, Yonkers, NY, 2016
Purchase College, PC4, Yonkers, NY, 2016
Spring 2015 Exhibition, Urban Studios Unbound Gallery,Yonkers, NY, 2016
Yoho Artists Studios, Yonkers, NY, 2016
Interpreting Meaning, Public Appliance, Yonkers, NY, 2015
Yoho Artists Studios, Yonkers, NY, 2015

GRANTS
City Artists Corps Grants Program, NYFA, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), with support from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) as well as Queens Theater, 2021

RESIDENCIES
Isabella Freedman Retreat Center, Adamah Falls Village, CT, 2025
Governors Island Artist in Residence, Governors Island, NYC, 2023
CRISIS Artist Residency Project, Online Residency, 2020
The Big Ink, Center for Contemporary Printmaking, Norwalk, CT, 2018

EDUCATION
MFA Painting, Lehman College, CUNY
MS Ed Museum Education, Bank Street College of Education
BA Fine Arts/Illustration, Stern College, YU
AAS Textile/Surface Design, Fashion Institute ofTechnology

LECTURES/PANELS
Panelist, NYSCA - New York State Commission on the Arts, Arts Education Panel, 2024
Guest Lecturer, Advanced Painting, Lehman College, 2024
Artist Talk, Botanica, Galerie Lucida, Red Bank, NJ, 2024
Panelist, NYSCA - New York State Commission on the Arts, Arts Education Panel, 2023
Artist Talk, Governors Island, Bronx Art Space House, NYC, 2023
Arts Education Panelist, New York State Council on the Arts, 2022
Moderator, Appetites of Ancestry: Food Demo and Conversation with Bronx Eats, BCA, 2022
Panelist, Percent for Art, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, Selection Panel PS 87X, 2021
Artist Talk, Tapestries of Memory, Empty Set Gallery, 2021
Guest Lecturer, Social Media, the Arts, and the Curator's View, LIM College, NYC, 2020
Curatorial Tour, Beasts Like Me: Feminism and Fantasy, Bronx Art Space, 2020
Moderator, Artist Panel Discussion, Beasts Like Me: Feminism and Fantasy, Bronx Art Space, 2020
Artist Interview, Hot Studio, Hot Cabinet Presents, 2020
Panelist, The Road Less Taken: Five SCW Alumnae and their Unexpected Career Paths. SCW, YU, 2020
Curatorial Tour, Listen: Artists Respond to Politics, Bronx Art Space, 2020
Moderator, Artist Panel Discussion, Listen: Artists Respond to Politics, Bronx Art Space, 2019
Curatorial Tour, Listen: Artists Respond to Politics, Bronx Art Space (BAS), 2019
Panelist, Art for New York City Public School, School Construction Authority, 2018
Guest Lecturer, Printmaking and The Day of the Dead, ArtsWestchester professional development for Westchester Art Teachers, 2015
Guest Lecturer, Cultural Resources in ELA and other subjects, Metropolitan New York,
Library Council NYC; Uncommon Approaches to The Common Core Conference, 2014

CURATORIAL
Ancestral Foods: Family Feasts, Bronx Art Space, Curator , 2023
Fraiming The Female Gaze: Women Artists and the New Historicism Lehman College Art Gallery, Co-Curator, 2023
Eco Urgency Artists Make the Case, Wave Hill Public Garden and Cultural Center and Lehman College Art Gallery Collaboration, Curatorial Committee, 2022
Geographies of The Self, Longwood Art Gallery at Hostos, BCA, Bronx, NY, Curator, 2022
Beasts Like Me: Feminism and Fantasy, Bronx Art Space, Bronx Art Space, Curator, 2020
Listen: Artists Respond to Politics, Bronx Arts Space, Curator, 2019