This presentation in the two vitrines in Untitled is the third in a series based on the rich exhibition archive of Witte de With. The long-term projectContemporary Arab Representations ran from 15 September 2002 until 2 November 2003.
In a new body of work, including paintings and a film in three parts, the first premiering in this exhibition, Rosalind Nashashibi explores affective relations and community building. These works follow a non-linear narrative that weaves various intimate settings, some within shared domestic spaces, others in outdoor environments. Shot in Lithuania, London, and Edinburgh, the film features the artist and her children, as well as close friends, which she considers extended family. In the process of creating this new work, Nashashibi questions how a group’s sense of commonality is dissolved when there is an absence of communal experience and adherence to linear time. Through an open-ended discussion of space and time travel in the film, which is in part inspired by the creation and dissolution of group relationships in Ursula Le Guin’s The Shobies’ Story (1990), Nashashibi explores new modes of conviviality, considering the absence of having a nuclear family structure, without an imperative model in sight. For years, Raimundas Malašauskas has collaborated with Nashashibi and is here the guest curator of the exhibition. He has remarked that Nashashibi’s work is the dip of an eye scrolling for a footnote while it reads. Writing about Nashashibi’s new work, Malašauskas points that “by […]