An e-book and Art Installation by Yasser Musa.
by Charles Gladden
BELIZE CITY, Wed. June 11, 2025
The Imagination Factri hosted a book launch, IMAGINEaSTORIES by Belizean artist, poet, and educator Yasser Musa on Wednesday, June 11.
The published literary work consists of 137 pages illustrating a curated collection of 102 Facebook posts written by Musa between 2008 and 2025—17 years of his insight, critique, and storytelling. The posts span a range of topics including art, history, technology, politics, education, and culture.
“That was launched today as a QR code so that anybody can download it for free, but we also presented a physical copy of an art book called Yasser Musa Works, which is a 400-page book, which is also available at the same QR code for free for people to look at so it’s a kind of duality–one book on text and the other on images,” Musa said.
“A lot of the information or the ideas in the writing involve the big transition that we are facing as human beings, as Belizeans, as part of the planet, which is a transition, a rapid transition from an analog world to a digital world, what we call the internet world, but now accelerating into an AI world. So, in a way, it’s like an artifact of the internet age, which is now soon becoming the past,” he added.
According to Musa, an estimate of 500 posts were considered to make the final cut of his publication, but only the final number was shortlisted. As mentioned above, Musa made social media publications throughout the years, highlighting various characters in his life – family members, musicians, historians – and formatted them into various categories.
“I kind of categorized, putting some on technology, education, politics, art, and to try to create a balance to give a buffet, so that people could see what has been going through my mind for 17 years,” he said.
Also, at the launch, Musa featured a collection of art pieces involving everyday objects that he used as inspiration.
“The ash from the Baptist church fire, you might think that is very morbid, but for me, the Baptist Church is a special landmark, where people, after the Emancipation in 1838, went to celebrate in a spiritual context. So, that is one of many different objects in addition to many paintings and drawings I did using the iPad,” he mentioned.
Musa has been an educator at St. John’s College, teaching art, history, and literature for nearly 30 years. He served as the 1st president of the National Institute of Culture and History (NICH) and continues to work as director of the Imagination Factri.
The project coincides with a milestone: the 30th anniversary of the Imagination Factri, a creative institution founded by Musa in June 1995.