“For me, art is not a style, but a space where the soul can breathe freely and be nurtured.”
–Yasmin Shamaily
My name is Yasmin. I was born and raised in Iran, and at the age of nineteen I left everything behind to begin a new life in the Netherlands with my mother. When we arrived, we first lived in an asylum seeker center and moved between different places before we could build a more stable life. Arriving here felt like starting over like becoming a child again in an unfamiliar world. For many years I lived with the feeling of being in between cultures, not fully at home anywhere.
For a long time I searched for home in people and places, until one day I made a quiet but decisive choice:
home is not something outside of me it is something I must learn to feel within.
Through creativity and deep inner work, I slowly began to build that sense of safety inside myself. Art has always been part of this process. In Iran I studied graphic design, and after arriving in the Netherlands I explored photography, fine art, and fashion design. Although these paths taught me a lot, something essential felt missing: depth, meaning, and true connection.
That changed during a period when I worked with children in an asylum center while going through a personal mental crisis myself. There I witnessed how powerful and healing art can be. This experience became a turning point and led me to study Art Therapy.
Living between cultures also became a journey of rediscovering myself. As a woman who grew up in Iran, I had to learn again what it means to feel free, embodied, and at home in my own femininity.
Today I am a graduate Art Therapist (BA) from Hogeschool Utrecht. My work is shaped by my lived experience of migration, identity, and rebuilding a sense of belonging. Because of this, I feel especially connected to culture-sensitive and community-based approaches, where people from different backgrounds can feel seen, safe, and supported.
My own healing journey has not been easy, and it is not finished. I am still learning, still growing, still coming home to myself. Along the way I discovered something important: our experiences — even the difficult ones — can become sources of wisdom, connection, and compassion.
This understanding lives at the heart of Kabila Healing Arts.
Kabila means tribe or community a place where people can gather, create, ground, and play. A space where people can remember who they are, reconnect with others, and rediscover the power that already lives within them.
