Vivian's Garden

Please note: due to a public program, Vivian’s Garden will not be screened on October 10.

Rosalind Nashashibi (b. 1973, Croyden, United Kingdom) is a London-based artist whose works explore the dynamics of human relationships. Capturing small actions and subtle moments of intimacy in her films, Nashashibi’s acute observations and associative sequences communicate abstract ideas, such as power and kinship, as they relate to her subjects.

In Vivian’s Garden (2017), Nashashibi depicts Vivian Suter and her mother Elisabeth Wild, two artists and Swiss–Austrian émigrés living in Panajachel, Guatemala. The film documents their coexistence with the indigenous Mayan workers who cook, clean, and assist them with the day-to-day necessities of their remote existence. Their handcrafted matriarchal compound is fused with their creative work; however, despite this refuge, the women are nevertheless vulnerable to political, social, and ecological pressures. The contrast between their interior lives and the surrounding world is accentuated by their relative isolation. Together, the two women negotiate extreme weather conditions and instances of both hostility and kindness from their indigenous neighbors to sustain an intimate and intensive life of artistic creation.

Through March 2020, a number of Suter’s paintings are installed on the High Line at Gansevoort St., as part of the group exhibition En Plein Air.

Organized by Melanie Kress, High Line Art Associate Curator.