Rosalind Nashashibi: Vivian's Garden

London-based filmmaker and artist Rosalind Nashashibi’s meditative films merge everyday observations with a more sensuous and even fantastical cinematographic vocabulary. 

Presented for the first time in the United States after its premiere at documenta 14 in 2017, Nashashibi’s tender and dreamy film Vivian’s Garden depicts the relationship between Austrian Swiss émigré artists Elisabeth Wild and Vivian Suter—mother and daughter—in the connected houses they share in a jungle garden in Panajachel, located outside of Guatemala City. Wild and Suter have a fluid relationship—the daughter is as much a mother as the other way around. The women live together with Mayan villagers, who act as guardians and maids

Nashashibi’s filmic portrait, which is presented adjacent to Suter’s exhibition el bosque interior in Griffin Court, focuses on the artistic, emotional, and economic lives of the household and offers a delicate look at the complex postcolonial relations within their domestic space. In the fractured moments, incomplete conversations, and intimate interiors that are integral aspects of Nashashibi’s approach to filmmaking, Vivian’s Garden presents a mesmerizing view into lives filled with moments of abstraction and lush beauty.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website