McLean Project for the Arts (MPA) will open its inaugural exhibition at the new MPA Berlage Arts & Education Center on Thursday, April 30, 2026. Yasmine C. Iskander: Life Through the Power of Color runs through June 7, with an Opening Exhibition Reception Thursday, May 14 from 7-9pm.

Guided by her passionate inner life, Yasmine Iskander (1998–2024) expressed her world in brilliantly colored abstract paintings. She built compositions by alternately veiling and revealing shapes, applying washes that soften edges and then marking the plane with geometric or biomorphic elements that assert themselves with decisive clarity.

“My art expresses my feelings about the happy moments in my life, but also about the difficult times I have had, especially my many heart and brain surgeries,” Iskander once explained. “When I paint, I feel strong, excited, exuberant and emotions flow as colors! I feel it in my heart. The colors and shapes that guide my work pop into my head. I use a range of vibrant colors.”

Iskander’s visual responses were shaped, in part, by her deafness—a condition that sharpened other senses and altered the way she attended to the world. She cultivated a heightened visual attentiveness: a sensitivity to rhythm in form, to the cadence of color shifts, to the spatial qualities of layered shapes.

“As a Deaf artist who wears hearing aids, I know that there are many ways to communicate. Colors are the most direct and powerful,” said Iskander.

Rather than defining her work by limitation, this aspect of her life enriched it, producing paintings that feel attuned to subtler registers of perception. Her canvases translate experience into a distinct aesthetic grammar.

Yasmine C. Iskander: Life Through the Power of Color marks the first exhibition in the new MPA Berlage Arts & Education Center, located at 6910 Fleetwood Road in downtown McLean.

A 6,100-square foot facility featuring three galleries, a state-of-the-art ceramics studio, and dynamic teaching spaces designed to expand access to the arts for all ages, the new arts and education center provides the McLean community with a vibrant hub for community engagement and growth.

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About McLean Project for the Arts

MPA Exhibits, Educates and Inspires

MPA, established in 1962, is a premier center for contemporary visual art exhibitions and arts education programming in Northern Virginia. As a private non-profit 501(c)(3), MPA aims to nurture creative human imagination through its mission to exhibit works from emerging and established MidAtlantic artists, promote public awareness of contemporary art, and offer instruction in the visual arts.

The new MPA Berlage Arts & Education Center is a 6,100-square-foot cultural destination in downtown McLean that brings together contemporary art exhibitions, arts education, and community programming in a welcoming space designed to inspire creativity and connection. To learn more, please visit mpaart.org.