Rosalind Nashashibi and Elena Narbutaitė

TO DIE FOR

Hour of the Star

Everything in the world begins with indifference. We’re fundamentally passionate about the shape of indifference, its simplicity, and enormous effort–we’re close to rotting. It lives with revenge, collecting the quills of insouciance in rusted pots and mouldy pans, squawking and hooting for morsels more than air. Starving, but not for food: starving for open arms and rain, for the sound of necks pale and curled, aching in compassion, prepared to slip out of nothingness discretely. To be what we never were.

Wait another week, and then another. We’re only vaguely beginning to know the kind of indifference we have inside of us. The shadows of stars are silent monsters.

You might have guessed that swans cry without effort, desperate and weary, just out of reach of phantoms, hazily aware of the transformation that comes when all the diamond stars align. Golden swans and golden geese that know fervor, sparkling and alive, laying eggs in tarnished pots—little swigs of life on this strange electric earth.

It’s not easy to spark and splinter oneself, to track the siren-sounds of time, and make truth recognisable. Our truest life asks if we ever loved more than me. Don’t be frightened. There are other ways of feeling the flashes of presence inside us.

By not accepting the way things are. 

- Estelle Hoy, 2024

Nashashibi and Narbutaitė have been consistently putting their practices and ways of thinking in parallel since 2016. Rosalind Nashashibi was part of Sun Kiss Feline performance initiated by Elena Narbutaitė and Eduardo Costa during Liverpool Biennial (2016). Narbutaitė has appeared in Rosalind Nashashibi's films and paintings over the last decade. Their art practices serve as a reference point for each other and mutual inspiration. They made exhibitions and assembled works in art publications, among them: Introduction, PM8 Gallery Vigo (2019); and All Things Are Done By Money, book published by Revolver, (2019) for Nashashibi’s Deep Redder exhibition Secession, Vienna (2019).

British Palestinian artist Rosalind Nashashibi is a painter and filmmaker. She is preoccupied with looking, in a way that almost crosses over into the subject’s camp, passing onto the side of the observed in a way that can be disconcerting. Nashashibi received her BA in Painting from Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield (UK) after which she attended the Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow (UK) where she received her MFA. In 2020, Nashashibi became the first artist in residence at the National Gallery in London (UK), after the program was re-established. She was a Turner Prize nominee in 2017, and represented Scotland in the 52nd Venice Biennale.
Her work has been included in Documenta14, Manifesta 7, the Nordic Triennial, and Sharjah 10. She was the first woman to win the Beck’s Futures prize in 2003. Nashashibi is one of six artists shortlisted for The Film London Jarman Award 2024.

Nashashibi has had solo exhibitions at venues including, Nottingham Contemporary (UK); Musée Art Contemporain Carréd’Art, Nîmes (FR); Radvila Palace Museum of Art for CAC, Vilnius (LT); S.M.A.K., Ghent (BE); The High Line, New York, NY (US); Tate Britain, London (UK); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (UK); The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (US); Imperial War Museum, London (UK); and ICA, London (UK). 

Elena Narbutaitė's sculptures combine influences from life, writing, music history, and conversations with scientists. She likes the nature of discovery, which is different from invention. Elena Narbutaitė has participated in exhibitions internationally, including The Lithuanian and Cyprus pavilion at the 55^th Venice Biennale (2013) and Liverpool Biennial (2016). Her more recent group exhibitions include: The Same Day, 15^th Baltic Triennial CAC, Vilnius (LT) in 2024; Unknown Familiars, Leopold Museum Vienna (AT) in 2024; Mars Returns, Zilinskas Gallery, Kaunas (LT) in 2022; The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, Neuer Kunstverein Wien, Vienna (AT) in 2022; and Prompt, Gianni Manhattan, Vienna (AT) in 2022. She has contributed to periodicals including The Federal, Nero, and CAC Interview, among other initiatives. She is an associate editor for BILL, an annual magazine of photographic stories initiated and edited by Julie Peeters.

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