‘This Quality’, a beguilingly deadpan study of, first, the placid face of a young woman and then of a wry variety of striped fabric covers on cars in Cairo. Brian Dillon, Sight & Sound
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
About the artist
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, Beck’s Futures Art Prize and the A M Qattan Foundation Artist’s Prize.