In Sparkling Cities, Inass Yassin draws inspiration for her artistic work from a period of her childhood in the seventies and eighties, in which an enchanting image of Arab cities was consolidated by popular Egyptian films. Film scenes on the beaches of Alexandria and Beirut reflected an ideal image of Arab cities and contributed to the Arab collective perception of these cities at the time. In “Sparkling Cities,” Yassin evokes that period through a comparison between the images perceived of the cities with the reality of those places in recent times where commercial buildings and investment projects transformed those places -whether in the film scenes or the cinema houses that used to screen those films. Using acrylic and mixed media on canvas, Yassin examines the replacement of those familiar spaces with detached and distant unfriendly sites.