The Invisible Worm (2024) is both funny and serious, with spontaneous moments of joy and physicality. Featuring Marie Lund and Rosalind Nashashibi, the film is driven by myths and clichés of the artist persona and the specific kind of friendship that can exist between artists, leading to both innocent and corrupted effects.

William Blake’s poem 'The Sick Rose' (1794) is a recurring text throughout the film. The invisible worm appears itself, at first as an embarrassing ‘hair in the gate’ stuck on the surface of the 16mm film, then mutating into an animated worm.

Nashashibi’s long term collaborator Elena Narbutaitė is the film’s protagonist and co-writer, and other artist protagonists include a male model, Nashashibi’s teenage son Pietro and a cat called Aloysha. Marie and Rosalind appear, as do their works, their studios and the galleries of Den Frie.

Join Rosalind Nashashibi in this in-conversation as she talks through the creative process behind her work, touching on themes of imperialism, corruption and the artist self.

Moderated by curator and art historian Dina Akhmadeeva. 

Biographies

Dina Akhmadeeva is a London-based curator, art historian and writer, whose work engages with embodiment and liveness, transnational art histories, and the limits of visibility and representation. As Assistant Curator, International Art at Tate Modern, she curates exhibitions, displays, new commissions and performances, and is responsible for developing the collection with a focus on artistic practices from Central and Eastern Europe.

Her most recent projects at Tate Modern include the performance programme Voice and Breath: JJJJJerome Ellis and Olivia Douglass (2024), collection displays of the works of Anna Daučíková, Nikita Gale, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Paul Maheke in the Tanks (2023-4), the Turbine Hall Hyundai Commission: El Anatsui (2023-4) and the exhibition Magdalena Abakanowicz: Every Tangle of Thread and Rope (2022-3). Independently, her projects include Baltic Triennial 13 (Vilnius, Tallinn, Riga, 2018), as well as group exhibitions at FUTURA, Prague (2021) and M HKA, Antwerp (2021-22). She holds a BA and an MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture from the University of Oxford, where she was an Arts and Humanities Research Council Master’s Scholar. Her recent writings have been published by Distanz, Frans Masereel Centrum and Cura Books.

British Palestinian artist Rosalind Nashashibi (b. 1973) is a painter and filmmaker. Her films chronicle intimate moments of contemporary life across diverse circumstances with a deeply empathetic and personal approach. In both her films and paintings, one piece often permeates into the next one, creating an ongoing dialogue between participants and bodies of work.

Nashashibi’s oeuvre is similarly imbued with precise references to the works of other filmmakers and painters— such as references to David Hockney, Pierre Bonnard and the filmmakers Alexander Kluge and Chantal Akerman. Her films are often non-linear, punctuated by manifestations of power dynamics and the subtext of collective histories. Subjects have included non-linear family structures, the multiple personae of the artist and chronicling Palestinian life.

Nashashibi received her BA in Painting from Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield (UK) after which she attended the Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow (UK) where she received her MFA. She was a Turner Prize nominee in 2017, and represented Scotland in the 52nd Venice Biennale. Her work has been included in Documenta 14, Manifesta 7, the Nordic Triennial, and Sharjah 10. She was the first woman to win the Beck’s Futures prize in 2003. Nashashibi has had solo exhibitions at Nottingham Contemporary (UK); Musée Art Contemporain Carré d’Art, Nîmes (FR); Radvila Palace Museum of Art for CAC, Vilnius (LT); S.M.A.K., Ghent (BE); The High Line, New York, NY (US); Tate Britain, London (UK); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (UK); The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (US); Imperial War Museum, London (UK); and ICA, London (UK).

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