Rosalind Nashashibi: Red Sea
Foksal Gallery Foundation collaborated with Rosalind Nashashibi for the first time in 2003, when the artist's short movie The State of Things was shown at theHidden in a Daylight exhibition in Cieszyn.The film portrays the superficial nature of our attitude towards things exotic and distant. Nashashibi paces her movies slowly, building a meditative rhythm, accentuating the intimate character of the shots and the underlying sensuality, regardless of whether she’s documenting cruising in London's Hapstead Heath, or the streets of Gaza. The artist focuses on the momentary impressions and observations that seem plain and ordinary.
The majority of her films are shot on 16 mm film, though not to add a touch of nostalgia but to grasp the liveliness of here and now. Analogue film and its chromatics channel the stream of consciousness and make that phenomenon observable. Not only we see and hear the sensations of the protagonists – also, we seize their thoughts, their associations.
Her new film screened at Foksal Gallery Foundation is a string of freely associated images of impressions and feelings, the intimate and common nature of which are meant to portray the intersection of life, art and interpersonal relations. It is interwoven with the expressionist paintings of Emil Nolde and the observations on the topic of time dilation and the relativity of one's emotions. The movie is inspired by The Shobies' Story penned by American science fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin.
Nashashibi studied painting at Sheffield Hallam University – it was only by the end of that period that she chose film as her main medium. That's the reason why she's inspired by painters whom she had portrayed in her movies – most notably Renée Levi in The Painter(2013) but also Vivian Suter, depicted in the affectionate, sensualVivian’s Garden(2017). Nashashibi's own paintings are gestural and expressive. Her glowing, abstract compositions at times assume corporeal forms, at times resemble simplified shapes. Their proportions seem to expand and slide, while the subtle drawing eludes specificexplanations.
An important part of Rosalind Nashashibi's oeuvre are works created in collaboration with Lucy Skaer - that started in 2005. Their joint exhibition - Thinking Through Other Artists– runs till the 6thof January 2019 at Tate St Ives.Their films exhibited there refer to the works of Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse and Paul Nash. They also show works of Pierre Bonnard, Louise Bourgeois, Jo Spence, Lee Miller, Gauri Gill and Rosselli Biscotti, among others. The main idea behind the exhibition is to analyze the way that a woman can be perceived, as well as her representation in the art itself.
