Rosalind Nashashibi / This Quality
Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2010 - Thu, 28 Oct 2010
Venue: Phoenix
Rosalind Nashashibi
Egypt | 2010 | 5mins | 35mm / DVD | Cert U
ICO and LUX The Artists Cinema Commission
Precedes all screenings of 'Made in Dagenham' screening Fri 15 Oct – Thu 28 Oct
'This Quality' is a film shot in downtown Cairo. It comprises two halves: the first shows a 30-something woman looking directly at the camera, and sometimes acknowledging the existence of others around her who we cannot see. She has beautiful face with eyes which seem to see internally rather than outwardly, they almost have the appearance of being painted on, suggesting the blindness of a mythological seer. The second half shows a series of parked cars covered with fabric. Each car suggests a sightless face, as the fabric stretched around the machine turns it into a face but also seems to hood the car so that it is conspicuously hidden, like a child covering his eyes.
Born 1973 in Croydon, Rosalind Nashashibi lives and works in London. She studied at Glasgow School of Art, CalArts and Sheffield Hallam University. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at the ICA, Stuttgart Kunstlerhaus, Berkeley Art Museum and Chisenhale Gallery. She has been awarded the John Kobal New Work Award, the A M Qattan Foundation Artist's Prize and in 2003 - the Beck's Futures Art Prize with her black and white film work, 'The States of Things'.
This quietly observational film presents a slice of British life in an unfamiliar way with an evocative soundtrack by Egyptian singer, Um Kolsoum and is a recent major acquisition by Leicester Arts & Museums Service with the generous help of the Contemporary Art Society (CAS). 'The States of Things' is the first moving image work to enter the collection at the New Walk Museum & Art Gallery and is exhibited (in partnership with The City Gallery) with a series of photographic works relating to 'This Quality' from the 2nd October-19th December 2010.
For more information on this exhibition, including details of the ARTIST ROOMS: Epoch Gerhard Richter exhibition, visit: www.leicester.gov.uk/citygallery.
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